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BSA

The Birmingham Small Arms Company (BSA), was established in 1863 on the edge of Birmingham. The purpose was to manufacture firearms for the British military.
By 1880, the market for guns had declined and the company started to make bicycles and tricycles. In 1903, their first motorcycle was produced. The first prototype motorcar was built in 1907.
Following the outbreak of war in 1914 the emphasis was once more switched back to armaments with 10,000 rifles being produced per week together with a total supply of 145,000 Lewis machine guns. Other war supplies were motorcycles, the first folding bicycles, aero components, gun locks, shells and fuses.
Car production ceased during hostilities until 1921 when a Hotchkiss powered car appeared which sold well until 1924.
When the 1939-1945 war came, the company, now consisting of 67 factories, they carried on supplying as before, but also made no less than 126,000 M20 motorcycles for the allied forces.
In 1951 Triumph Motorcycles was purchased to make the BSA Group the largest producer of motorcycles in the world.
In 1986 BSA moved premises to Blockley in Gloucestershire to occupy 20,000 sq. ft. of required space for the production of some 1,200 army bikes and 400 tea-plant bikes, balled Bushmans.
In 1991 BSA Company was merged with another buy out company, Mike Jackson's Andover Norton International Ltd., to form a new BSA Group.
In December 1994 the Colquhoun and Jackson's BSA Group was taken over by a newly formed BSA Regal Group.