Brotherly love

Colin Jansen built himself a BSA café racer twin just like he’d wanted in the 1960s – his brother liked it so much, he had Colin make him one too.

- JAMES ROBINSON

With the easing of lockdown, we were able to get out and finally do some ‘visiting’ – and one of the first journeys was to Cambridgeshire, to see Colin Jansen and this pair of glorious BSA twins. Some may recognise one of the Beesas, as it was magazine featured some years ago, while the other is a ‘new build’ – made in response to a request from Colin’s brother Kevin, who rather liked his older sibling’s smart machine.

Racy Beesa twins

During the immediate post Second World War years, one would have said that sporting parallel twins were the preserve of Triumph, while BSA were single cylinder exponents, which, although true to an extent, is slightly simplistic. Though overshadowed somewhat by the exploits of its own Gold Stars, BSA made a range of sporty two cylinder machines, which began with the 1949 Star Twin, a twin carburettor version of the original long-stroke 495cc. The twin-carb Star Twin only ran for two seasons, the standard A7 being replaced for 1951 with the revised 497cc engine version, the new Star Twin based on that too, and losing one of the carburettors as well. All Star Twins had a plunger frame, as did 1953’s Super Flash; the first of the ‘sporty’ 650cc BSA twins.

The first swinging arm frames for the performance models came in 1954; the 500cc was now the Shooting Star, the 650cc the Road Rocket. The half-litre version was to retain its moniker throughout, while the Road Rocket became the Super Rocket for 1958, the same year it was joined by the exportonly Rocket Scrambler; this was an unashamed competition twin, renamed the Spitfire for 1960.