BSA was once the largest motorcycle manufacturer in the world, producing the Gold Star, Bantam and the Super rocket, but its success didn’t last, and the company went effectively bankrupt in 1972 after which it was taken over by the Norton Villiers Triumph consortium.
But after almost 50 years, the iconic Birmingham brand is about to be revived by Indian billionaire Anand Mahindra, who hopes to “resurrect the British motorbike industry”.
Mahindra has big plans to electrify the brand and start building fully electric motorbikes along with combustion engine models by the end of 2021. Mahindra’s plan is backed by the UK government, which awarded the new BSA company a GBP 4.6 million ($6.1 million) grant to develop electric motorcycles.
New BSA isn’t the first vintage motorcycle project for Mahindra, who successfully revived the Czechslovakian Jawa brand in 2018. Jawa was relaunched two years ago and already achieved more than 50,000 sales in its first full year, an achievement Mahindra now looks to repeat with the new BSA brand.
