Unexpected delight
Even some BSA aficionados might be surprised to see the name on the petrol tank of this little machine, because it was produced several years after the original Small Heath company closed its factory doors. It wasn’t the only attempt to revive the marque name though, the best known probably being the Yamaha-engined Gold Star produced in the 1990s by Southampton-based BSA-Regal. Incidentally the BSA name is now owned by the Indian firm of Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd, so let’s not get into moral arguments over marque-identity, or we’ll end up debating whether the machines currently being made at Donington and Hinckley have any ethical right to be called Nortons or Triumphs.
In fact this machine does have a genuine – albeit tenuous – link back to 1972 or thereabouts when BSA was absorbed into the Norton Villiers Triumph empire. Bertie Goodman (of the Velocette dynasty)
