BSA Rocket 3
IMAGINE BEING THE development manager at a maker of mobile phones in 2007. There you are, happily turning out straightforward push button phones by the shipload. Your customers can’t get enough of your designs – and then Apple introduce the iPhone and you suddenly discover your entire range is out of date.
That’s almost what the bosses at BSA-Triumph found themselves dealing with in the mid-1960s. After decades of turning out solid and sporty, if occasionally unreliable, machines, their market was booming. And then the long derided and scorned Japanese started to come up with bigger and better motorcycles of increasing sophistication, while the Italians wiped out what was left of the lightweight market with nice clean scooters.
As managers ran around like headless chickens or buried their heads ostrich-like, the designers remained at their posts. In 1 9 6 3 Doug Hele, who had been poached from Norton by Bert Hopwood, had taken Triumph’s 500 twin engine, added a third cylinder and created, on paper, the P1 – a 7 50cc triple. The design was rejected by Triumph’s boss Edward Turner who had his own ideas for a multi-cylinder big bike and Hele, along with Bert Hopwood and J ack Wicks put the P on the back burner. It was only when Turner retired and BSA Group went into a panic about the state of their business that the triple resurfaced.
In 1965,withrumoursoffour-cylinder machines to come from Honda and Kawasaki beginning to escape J apan, Doug Hele was able to placate the bosses with his design for a triple. Three complete sets of engine casings were produced and
