Swords & Ploughshares

 

Caught a bit of a 'seventies WWII film earlier, that as usual, given it was about resistance action involving the Brits, featured the Sten gun, a cheaply-made submachine gun designed to be both simple to manufacture and to field maintain, aimed mostly at close-fighting commando and clandestine operations. A significant number of these weapons were manufactured at the British Small Arms Company (BSA) works, in Birmingham. BSA over an extended period manufactured arms, bicycles, and later, famously, motorcycles, which were among the world's finest until the Japanese motorcycle industry kicked into gear in the late 'sixties, and showed the world a new future for the motorbike, producing more powerful, cleaner and more reliable bikes than the Brits or the Americans could at the time.

Nevertheless, some of the most memorable two-wheel transport of all time was produced in the UK from the 'twenties up until the eventual ascendancy of the Universal Japanese Motorcycle of the 'seventies and eighties. Triumph, Norton, Matchless, Ariel, BSA, et al. all made classics that are still revered - and now collected - to this day. I remember one particular machine that a guy in Bethesda had restored back in the 'eighties, from what must have been a box of bits back then: a BSA Gold Star. The thing was a work of art when he'd finished with it, and wherever he rode it, the smell of Castrol R and hot exhaust filled the air in its wake: redolent of nothing less than the postwar Britain of my youth.