British / Japanese Motorcycle Timeline

[ByTheLake]

As a history buff with both British and Japanese bikes in the garage, I've always been interested in studying the rapid decline and collapse of the British motorcycle industry in the 1960s and 1970s. There's no doubt the Japanese, particularly Honda, played a significant role in that decline, but many other factors contributed as well - too many to discuss in this thread.

For grins, I created a one-page timeline in PDF format listing some of the key events of this period:

1950 - 1980 Motorcycle Timeline

Key observations and points:

1) As the European scooter market boomed during the 1950s and 1960s, the British invested heavily in scooters to compete with the likes of Lambretta and Vespa, but the British products did not sell well. This diverted critical funds away from the core motorcycle products that were in desperate need of updating.

2) Ancient tooling contributed to the British retaining the vertically-split engine cases, which were prone to leaking oil.

3) British bikes were largely hand built, resulting in higher assembly costs and selling prices.

4) The Japanese, especially Honda, were creating new, modern engine designs almost at will, with overhead camshafts, horizontally split engine cases that didn't leak oil, electric starters, and eventually, disc brakes.

5) Lacking funds and resources to create completely new engine designs, the British tended to modify existing designs, increasing displacement, compression ratios, or even adding a third cylinder in the case of the BSA and Triumph triples, in an attempt to compete.

Such a fascinating time in industrial history, with so many lessons learned. The American auto industry could have learned a lot by observing the fall of the British motorcycle industry.