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The Birmingham Small Arms Firm Limited (BSA) was a major British professional combine, a grouping of businesses manufacturing armed service and sporting firearms; cycles; motorcycles; cars; buses and bodies; steel; iron diffusion; 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 major motorbike producer in the world. Back in the 1955s and early 1960s poor management and failure to develop new products in the motorcycle division contributed to a dramatic drop of sales to their 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 functions with what is now Manganese Fermeté Holdings, then owners of Norton-Villiers, and over the following decade further closures and dispersals. The initial com...
