Travels on a BSA Bantam

TRAVELS ON A BSA BANTAM by Photography & text by George E. Todd DGPh | Make Your Own Book

Do yourself a favor and read / buy this book! It's sure on my list of things i want to buy (when i'm rich)

Bsa Bantam by Owen Wright

After having it laying to long on my book shelf i found some time to read & write about it...

BSA Bantam by Owen Wright

BSA bantam by Owen Wright
190 page's with mostly text and great pictures & ad’s.

I like bike's that have a story behind them. The Bsa Bantam is a very good example of this. It’s not a bike with the most glamour’s lifestyle but it has so much more!

Owen Wright has made a very good book about the bike, some time ago.
The book has one big main development story and from time to time a side story.
It’s about using the bike, maintaining a daily driver, some glimpse about travel story’s.

It also tells how to make it fast, what points you need to watch and where to invest.
Even the GPO & postal bike’s have a nice place in the book!

Main story:
From the early days before the wars, about the factory, the corporate takeover, ...
In what world the D1 got it’s stand in the BSA range and kept in production & development. What they changed and why. Design wise and for the maintaining! You won’t get a technical spec sheet with how many air you need to pump up your tire’s.
But you will know what tire they used at that time for a spare part! He even explains you, why you should be glad you have a bantam instead of another bike!

The search from BSA for a rival, for the many Italian style vespa’s & lambretta’s.
Experiments with different new engine’s and how they turned out. The creation of the Beagle with pressed frame. And how the Japanese made a moped after it!

And later on about how Honda made the change. Not about the big CB750. Who was a big dreambike. But how they build a first factory in Europe (Belgium) and made a cub & a Honda dream, who changed the world for lightweight bike’s forever. How BSA could not match the finish of the Honda. But still got a big amount of followers, who loved the simple bike.

The following redesign with the famous 4 speed gearbox, the experiment with auto lube and a how blabliblabla as a new director made the famous BSA bushman a fact. With modern colors and a modified frame! How eventually BSA turned it’s back to small motorcycles and focused on superbike’s.

Thank god the story does not end there! You get a nice idea of many victory’s with bantams. What & how you can find information on how to make your bantam faster without losing to much reliability.

From the book you get a lot of ‘bang for the pound’ much like the bantam (once) was!
Nice written out for you.

I totally enjoyed the book on my 2 weeks holiday trip to Sweden and I now I will fall back on it sometimes
Ruben Deboosere 8 / 08 / 2011

Gasoline gypsy

Peggy Thomas bought her B.S.A. Bantam, a rigid-framed D1, in 1950.
She immediately named it Oppy after its registration number, OPE 811.
Within a few weeks she set off on a 4,500 mile tour around Scandinavia accompanied by her friend, Prudence Beggs.

Peggy's most famous journey though was an 18 month, 14,000 mile epic in North America.
She took her 60lb Airedale dog, Matelot, along, ensconced in a makeshift box on the Bantam's parcel rack. Starting in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the pair traversed Canada to Vancouver on the Pacific coast then headed south down the West Coast of the United States.
Crossing into Mexico, Peggy and Matelot travelled as far as Mexico City before heading for the Atlantic coast and taking a steamer to Florida. After an extended stay on the Florida Quays, Peggy's journey ended with a ride north to New York. She carried a typewriter with her for the entire journey and wrote this now extremely scarce travelogue about her adventure.

... 425£