1968 BSA Bantam D14/4, 175cc
The Birmingham Small Arms Organization Limited (BSA) was a major British professional combine, several businesses manufacturing armed forces and sporting firearms; bikes; motorcycles; cars; buses and bodies; steel; iron diffusion; hand, power, and machine tools; coal cleaning and handling plants; sintered materials; and hard chrome process. In its peak, BSA (who also owned Triumph) was the major motorbike producer in the world. Back in the 1952s and early 1960s poor management and failure to develop new products in the motorcycle division contributed 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 functions in what is now Manganese Fermeté Holdings, then owners of Norton-Villiers, and over the following decade further closures and dispersals. The first comp...