The First Classic Bsa Scene
THE FIRST CLASSIC BSA SCENE
By Bruce Main-Smith
MoEorsports
6jJ5Gyav~
St. Louis. Mo, 63/16
$5.95 plus 75~ postage
Bruce Main-Smith is one of those industrious journalists who go around.. photographing everything in sight and has done so for years. I used to do that but the difference is that he started a publishing company to print his own, probably from a surfeit of Art Editors. Consequently we have had offered several volumes of Velocette or Norton scenes in the same format (6 by 8 in. glossy paperback, mostly pix, 64 pp) and as he has apparently run out of those, we now have BSA. Quite frankly the only BSA I ever owned was also the worst bike ditto ditto; a friend has lent me a stack of late ' 60s early '70s copies of Motor Cycle Sport, an interesting offshoot of the British Motor Sport, and what Limey BSA owners have to say about their own machines is a caution. Seriously, folks, the book is more than just a series of shots, taken at Club rallies by the look of them, of B20s and those horrid twins. Searchers for information will find photos (usually taken from more than one angle, so handy for restorers) of
all sorts of trick old racers, hybrids, mysteries, ISDT mounts, prototypes and rare slopovers to/from Triumphs including what looks like a square-barrel GP Twin disguised as a Beezer. These are mostly postwar, I think, as the prewar stuff is usually covered in his Vintage Scenes. Therefore, this “Scene” is better reading for folks who may not really be hipped on this particular marque. In addition, BMS provides a short but pithy preface setting out some home truths on his version of why the celebrated Gold Star went out of production, dirt of Joseph Lucas and its hand in dictating motorcycle design, plus a few remarks about BSA's suffering from the “fickle” American market. As I remember those years, the American market was fickle because it got tired of overweight bikes designed 30 years previously, got tired of unreliability, and got tired of needed parts “on the water.” A chrome tank is no substitute for horrid noises underneath it. They had a chance to update their wares and missed it.
—Henry N. Manney III
