Birmingham Small Arms Company
This article is not about Gamo subsidiary BSA Guns (UK) Limited or 'BSA Company' or its successors.
The Birmingham Small Arms Company Limited (BSA) was a major industrial combine, a group of businesses manufacturing military and sporting firearms; bicycles; motorcycles; cars; buses and bodies; steel; iron castings; hand, power, and machine tools; coal cleaning and handling plants; sintered metals; and hard chrome process.
At its peak, BSA was the largest motorcycle producer in the world. Loss of sales and poor investments in new products in the motorcycle division, which included Triumph Motorcycles, led to problems for the whole group.
A government-organized rescue operation in 1973 led to the takeover of remaining operations by what is now Manganese Bronze Holdings, then owners of Norton-Villiers, and over the following decade further closures and dispersals. The original company, The Birmingham Small Arms Company Limited, remains a subsidiary of Manganese Bronze but its name was changed in 1987.
Manganese Bronze continues to operate former BSA subsidiary Carbodies, now known as LTI Limited, manufacturers of London Taxicabs and the largest wholly British owned car manufacturer.
Read more about Birmingham Small Arms Company: History of The BSA Industrial Group
Famous quotes containing the words small, arms and/or company:
“Great indebtedness does not lead to thankfulness, but rather to vengefulness; and when a small favor is not forgotten it turns into a gnawing worm.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Now you know Danton: in a few hours he will fall asleep in the arms of glory.”
—Georg Büchner (1813–1837)
“The Bermudas are said to have been discovered by a Spanish ship of that name which was wrecked on them.... Yet at the very first planting of them with some sixty persons, in 1612, the first governor, the same year, “built and laid the foundation of eight or nine forts.” To be ready, one would say, to entertain the first ship’s company that should be next shipwrecked on to them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)