A GOLDEN future?

The stunning return of a legendary name …

- ALAN CATHCART

It's been over 50 years since a new BSA rolled off a production line, but it's back, and the first model has the most legendary name Gold Star.

Like the historical model, the new bike is powered by a big single. Styled to look like the older 500cc air-cooled mill, the new Gold Star has a 652cc DOHC engine with twin counterbalancers to smooth out vibration and a five-speed gearbox with a slipper clutch.

Engine performance is moderate, producing 45 bhp/33.56 kW at 6500 rpm at the crankshaft, with peak torque of 55 Nm/40.57 ft-lb delivered at 4000 rpm, but the factory has already said it deliberately kept performance down to make it learner-licence suitable in the UK and Europe (and potentially LAMS in Australia).

Now Indian owned - a 60/40 split between Mahindra (a huge car and machinery conglomerate) and private investors - the company will build bikes in both India and the UK.

The engine is based on designs from Rotax, heavily modified and updated. So alongside the 180 Indian-based engineers at Mahindra Two-Wheelers' well equipped R&D Centre in Pune, to achieve this BSA hired the Graz Technical University in Austria, which over the years has played an important role in assisting KTM to develop its range of four-stroke singles.

BSA claims the result is an engine which produces over 40Nm of torque from just 1800rpm to redline.