The Vintagent: January 2011
The Birmingham Small Arms Organization Limited (BSA) was a major British professional combine, several businesses manufacturing armed forces and sporting firearms; mountain bikes; motorcycles; cars; buses and bodies; steel; iron ordonnance; hand, power, and machine tools; coal cleaning and handling plants; sintered alloys; and hard chrome process. In its peak, BSA (who also owned Triumph) was the most significant motorbike producer in the world. Back in the 1955s and early 1960s poor management and failure to develop new products in the motorcycle division added to a dramatic drop of sales to it is major USA market. The management had failed to appreciate the value of the resurgent Japanese motorcycle industry, leading to problems for the complete BSA group. A government-organised rescue procedure in 1973 led to the takeover of remaining businesses with what is now Manganese Dureté Holdings, then owners of Norton-Villiers, and over the following decade further closures and dispersals. ...