Stow on the Wold

The ancient stocks still stand in the village square at Stow on the Wold, which is famous for its buildings of brown and yellow Cotswold stone. The machine in the foreground is of course, a BSA Bantam. (link)

Collection time

Collection time, March 1954this young man is taking delivery of a BSA Bantam D1 De Luxe (or perhaps a early D3.) link

Motorpace racing

Bantams being used for cycle pacing

Motorpace racing was glamorous but dangerous. Falls were common, largely because bicycle tires tended to burst at speed. The riders wore neither helmets nor gloves. They depended on fast reflexes, the rude health of youth, and luck. Despite having all three, Bobby Walthour collected an impressive (or dismaying) inventory of injuries over his career: 28 fractures of the right collarbone, 18 of the left, 32 broken ribs, and 60 stitches to his face and head. Once, according to family history, he was given up for dead in Paris and taken to a morgue, where he regained consciousness on the slab. link

Early D1 travel

I think i have posted this pic before but from a differend source. 

So here is it again!

C10L & Bantam

Looks like the lady is more impressed by the bantam ! link

How it's done!

Nice footage!

BSA Bantam D7 Mountain Air, Cwmbran 1960s

The D7 variant of the popular BSA two stroke single which continued until the 1970s when BSA fell to Japanese competition.

D14/4 up to B25 Starfire!

BSA Bantam D14/4 Cwmbran 1969 

My first motor bike, the BSA Bantam D14/4, bought second hand from RJ Ware, Commercial Street, Newport. I later upgraded to a BSA B25 Starfire.

My second and last motor bike, bought new from RJ Ware, Commercial Street, Newport (my first bike was a D14/4 BSA Bantam). After a carefree day driving around the Brecon Beacons, some idiot in a car came onto Pontymoile roundabout and knocked me off as I was driving around it. (Neither bike nor myself were badly damaged).

BSA B25 Starfire Birmingham University 1970
My second and last motor bike, bought new from RJ Ware, Commercial Street, Newport (my first bike was a D14/4 BSA Bantam). Visiting a friend studying at Birmingham University.

Peggy Thomas

Somewhere close to sydney

Where did that nice blond girl go?

Youre a man now!

Way to go! Congratz with the new bike!

Check out the (fancy) Christopher Schulstad blog.

Bantam rear engine buggy!

Holidays 1953

Some very very very nice roadtrip in 1953.

Warning: looking at the pictues will motivate you to travel with the bantam!

Hell Yeah!

The McPhee Bantams

When, early in 1956 Jim McPhee rebuilt a rigid-frame BSA Bantam for use in his Fremantle shop neither he nor anyone else had any idea that a partnership had been formed which was to change the entire history of 125cc motorcycle racing in WA and make the name McPhee Bantam a by-word throughout the sport.

Brenda Collins

 Ca. 1952  Brenda Collins (England, Kent)
North-America. The journalist Brenda rode a 16.000 kms long tour through North-America with a BSA-Bantam.
Route: GB - USA - Canada - Mexico.
25th.04.2001 1st information by Hugo Wilson´s book: Das Lexikon vom Motorrad, page 37.
25.04.2001 I do not know more details. Who knows more, her earlier/present address or publications about her??
08.12.2003 Not to find in internet.

Brenda Collins was a 25-year old journalist from England, and between 1953 and 1954 she rode a 125cc B.S.A. Bantam D1 motorcycle more than 10,000 miles around North America.

The young traveler had no previous motorcycle experience before taking delivery of her Bantam from Arlington Cycle & Sports Ltd., B.S.A. distributors in Montreal, Canada.

Quoted from the brochure, “…Collins, a young journalist from Kent, with a taste for adventure, was working in Montreal, and felt she would like to see more of Canada and the United States – as economically as possible! At a motor-cycle show she saw a B.S.A. 125 c.c. ‘Bantam’ and immediately decided that this was the ideal method of transport for her trip across the wide open spaces – but for one snag – she couldn’t ride.

“However, learning to ride a ‘Bantam’ is so easy and Brenda soon mastered it…”

Collins’ Bantam, one of two models available in 1953, was the 125cc Two-Stroke Model D1 with a plunger spring frame. There was also a D1 with a rigid frame.

The machine was based on the same German DKW RT125 design from the ‘30s that was the starting point for Harley-Davidson’s late-‘40s S125, later known as the Hummer. Both companies, along with Russia’s MMZ, were given rights to produce the little two-stroke design as part of war reparations following World War II.

B.S.A.’s Bantam had a 123cc single-cylinder motor with a three-speed, unit construction gearbox. The fuel tank carried 13/4 gallons of gasoline and oil mix, brakes were 5” in diameter, and the Bantam had a dry weight of 183 pounds.

Leaving Montreal in August 1953, equipped with 100 lbs. of gear, including a portable typewriter, Collins headed west across Canada. She toured through Winnipeg, Manitoba; Regina, Saskatchewan; Calgary and Banff, Alberta; before crossing the Rocky Mountains to Vancouver, British Columbia. From Canada’s west coast, she rode down to San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego before traveling east to Tucson, Arizona; Houston; New Orleans and Jacksonville, Florida. Northward she stopped in Savannah, Georgia; Raleigh, North Carolina; Washington, DC; and New York, where she arrived in April 1954.

Says the brochure, “En route through Canada she took temporary jobs to supplement her $2 a day budget, wrote up her experiences for several magazines and papers and appeared on various radio programmes.

“In a test that would punish many a bigger motor-cycle the ‘Bantam’ gave her reliable and economical service under all the varied conditions she encountered on her trip.”

Collins’ actual saddle time on the Bantam was 90 days, and her average speed was 35 to 40 miles per hour. But that modest pace was enough to add up to more than 10,000 miles by the time she was through.

It’s proof that, as the brochure says, “You, too, can ‘Leave it to your B.S.A.’”

By American Wind