BSA IS BACK! A GOLD STAR Shining Brightly

2022 BSA GOLD STAR 650. Full inside story of the creation of the born-again production-ready 2022 BSA Gold Star 650 launched at the December 2021 Motorcycle Live Birmingham Show

- Alan Cathcart

BSA is back! Almost exactly 50 years after the final machine rolled off the lines of its Small Heath factory in central Birmingham in the summer of 1973, thus marking the end of 63 years of non-stop production by Britain’s largest motorcycle company (and at one time, the world’s biggest), BSA has finally been revived. Very appropriately, at Birmingham’s Motorcycle Live Show on December 4 the new 2022 BSA Gold Star was unveiled, named after the company’s most illustrious sporting model, and the product of five years of planning and development by giant Indian conglomerate Mahindra & Mahindra/M&M, after it purchased the rights to the historic name in November 2016 from British holder BSA Regal.

Since then, Classic Legends – a subsidiary of M&M in which it holds a 60% stake – has been working under the leadership of its CEO Ashish Joshi, a 15-year former Royal Enfield key executive before heading up Triumph India, to develop a range of products bearing the BSA badge. The first of these is the 650cc Gold Star displayed at Motorcycle Live, which Joshi says is scheduled to be available in BSA’s British dealerships from April onwards, before deliveries commence later this year to various European countries, with the USA, Australasia and South Africa coming up next. Initially, production will take place at Mahindra Two-Wheelers’ ultra-modern factory in central India, where the bikes displayed at Birmingham were built. But Ashish Joshi has declared that he’s intent on bringing BSA production to the UK as soon as possible [see Interview].