MYSTERY Machine
The years of the Great War were relatively good to the Birmingham Small Arms company. As a gun manufacturer that may appear obvious, but they were helped by what some may regard as a rather shortsighted failure of the British government to pay attention to world events. It had run down stocks and was in the process of doing away with the old Lee Enfield rifle and replacing it with… er… the German Mauser.
The upscaling of arms production to overcome this shortcoming was quite staggering, with BSA eventually knocking out in impressive 10,000 Lee Enfield rifles a week, along with 2000 Lewis machine guns. Throw in the BSA folding bicycle used by troops in the conflict, plus military motorcycles used everywhere from Flanders to South Africa, and BSA were kept more than busy.
In addition, BSA kept on producing civilian machines – until 1916, at least, when the War Department issued a decree prohibiting ‘the manufacture or repair of any machine designed for mechanical transportation’. Unless it was under permit to the War Office, obviously.
Still, the company was in rude health at the end of the war, and post-war sales could only have been enhanced by successes for BSA riders in various major national trials over the next few years – all five BSA works riders gained gold medals in the 1921 Scottish Six Days Trial for example. Which
