Friday, January 4, 2008

BSAs Made in India and CZs sold as Indians in America

For all you monohockers (intentional) out there, India's first production mono-shock rear-ended bike was the BSA Falcon. Another variant called the BSA Bond, I believe, had conventional twin rear shock absorbers.














From what i gophered (wish I could still say 'gleaned' but in this day and age, they have forgotten the cube), this was some sort of a tea manufacturing company's foray into motorcycles.
BSA (UK) closed shop in the late 70s but the name was still licenced out to others. This particular beesah was powered by a 50cc Minarelli engine.
Quite the done thing, look at what Jawa (Czech.) did!
They were probably The World's Smallest Indian. (Ref2AnthonyHopkinsmovie The World's Fastest Indian)











1 comment:

Unknown said...

I got one of the first BSA Brigands when I was 16, a great little bike that out performed all my mates 50cc bikes (and was taller, always an advantage if you are tall)

The Brigand was the first (and probably still the only) moped to sucessfully get to the top of Mount Snowden (one of the motorcycle papers did this as a publicity stunt)