Fowl play
When I was in Africa in 2009, I found that any motorbike, irrespective of make, was referred to as ‘a Honda’ in the same way that in 1950s Britain, any motorised carpet sweeper was ‘a Hoover.
It had been the same then for two-wheelers – any lightweight motorcycle would be called ‘a Bantam’, so ubiquitous were BSA’s Mist Green 125s, everybody’s first bike. After engine production by men at the Group’s Studley Road, Redditch factory, the predominantly female workforce on the assembly line at Small Heath sometimes produced 400 a week. The 100,000th D1 was made in 1953, and by the time the model’s end came in March 1971, well over 400,000 Bantams had been built.
I came to Bantams a couple of years after that, so mine were all later 175s and because I’d started on a 125cc scooter, I’d never ridden a D1, though a couple of the lads in our village had run them.
To remedy this I went back to the Isle of Wight, where they do the time-warp pretty good, and to Ken Powell, whose collection of, erm, unusual lightweights (see the last couple of issues) also naturally included a 1953 D1 Bantam, with plunger suspension and Wipac Geni-mag direct lighting, more of which later.
From a nunnery
“I got it 11 years ago” said cheerful Ken. “I had a friend who was
