SUPER SPORTY CEEFER
At the risk of sounding somewhat bike-bigoted and, unusually for someone as pro-BSA as me, I dislike BSA C15s intensely. I abhor their poor performance and dreadful build quality, but most of all I despise their meanness. At a time when all three Japanese motorcycle manufacturers were offering wonderful experiences for riders of lightweight motorcycles BSA provided less, and worse, with the C15.
If you rode a BSA Spitfire, or raced a B50 MX on the dirt, you could hold your head up high because these bikes had flair and performance, even if they were becoming ever cruder in comparison with the Japanese. By contrast the C15 dripped inadequacy from every pore, and leading the mediocrity pack was the SS80 – BSA’s sports version of the basic C15.
The story starts in September 1958 when BSA announced their all-new one-stop motorcycle shopping experience: the C15. The idea was that this single machine would replace the 250cc C12 as a commuter motorcycle capable of taking the working masses from the new housing estates to their factories. The same bike would then carry the head of the family, always a man of course (at least in the demographic which the C15 inhabited), to Saturday’s football match. In short, it was intended as a working utility vehicle.
The notional ‘recreational motorcycling’ slot previously occupied by BSA’s dull, heavy, expensive to produce and poorly performing B31
