Birmingham Small Arms

The Birmingham Small Arms Company Limited (BSA)

Type	Listed company
Fate	Acquired 1973 by Manganese Bronze Holdings
Founded	Gun Quarter, Birmingham, England, 1861
Headquarters	Birmingham, UK
Key people	J.D. Goodman (Chairman 1863–1900) Sir Hallewell Rogers (Chairman 1906–28) Dudley Docker, Sir Bernard Docker (Chairman 1940–56) Jack Sangster (Chairman 1956–61)
Products	firearms ammunition bicycles motorcycles vehicles military equipment
Subsidiaries	Firearms  BSA Guns Cycles and motorcycles  BSA Cycles  BSA Motor Cycles  New Hudson  Sunbeam Cycles  Ariel Motors  Triumph Engineering Motorcars, buses and bodies  The Daimler Company  The Lanchester Motor Company  Transport Vehicles (Daimler)  BSA cars Iron castings  Cardiff Foundry and Engineering Machine and small tools  BSA Tools  Burton Griffiths & Co  BG Machinery Fine steels  William Jessop & Sons, JJ Saville & Co  Bromley Fisher & Turton Coal cleaning and sintering plant  The Birtley Co Hard chrome process  Monochrome Sintered metals  Metal & Plastic Compacts
Footnotes / references BSA brand Bicycles are currently manufactured and distributed in India by TI Cycles of India Motorcycles bearing the brand BSA were briefly manufactured after 1979 by a business now known as BSA Regal BSA brand air rifles are manufactured in Birmingham by a subsidiary of Spanish manufacturer Gamo

BSA Motorcycles Ltd

Industry	Motorcycle
Fate	effectively bankrupt
Successor	Norton-Villiers-Triumph
Founded	1919
Defunct	1972
Parent	BSA

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 British 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 (who also owned Triumph) was the largest motorcycle producer in the world. In the late 1950s and early 1960s poor management and failure to develop new products in the motorcycle division led to a dramatic decline of sales to its major USA market. The management had failed to appreciate the importance of the resurgent Japanese motorcycle industry, leading to problems for the entire BSA group.

A government-organised 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 The London Taxi Company, previously LTI Limited, manufacturers of London taxicabs and formerly the largest wholly British-owned car manufacturer. (Manganese Bronze is now owned by the Chinese company Geely).

BSA began in June 1861 in the Gun Quarter, Birmingham, England, founded specifically to manufacture guns by machinery. It was formed by a group of fourteen gunsmith members of the Birmingham Small Arms Trade Association. The market had moved against British gunsmiths following the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854 because the Board of Ordnance's Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield had introduced machinery made in the USA and Enfield's greatly increased output had been achieved with reduced reliance on skilled craftsmen. The War Office provided this new grouping of gunsmiths free access to technical drawings and their facilities at their Enfield factory.

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