This book provides a gripping description and analysis of the mis-steps and misfortunes of the British motor cycle industry, from the 1920’s through to the effective death of the industry in the 1970’s. This book will be of interest to anyone with even a passing interest in Britains recent manufacturing history.
The book manages to combine detail and analysis together in an engaging and easily-read style that doesn’t demand any prior knowledge of motor cycles or the companies involved. The attitudes, mistakes and economic factors described within this book have many parallels to the attitudes, mistakes and economic factors that were playing-out within Britain’s industrial sector. Hence this book provides a fascinating wider view to anyone interested in the calamitous events that befell motor car manufacturing in the same period, Rover included.
What’s fascinating about the story is that the mistakes seem clear in retrospect. Instead of the tired old cliche that union militancy killed British manufacturing, it is very apparent that the biggest issues here were an unwillingness of management to adapt their product to changing market trends, a failure of product design, insufficient capital investment, and an arrogance in the face of rising competition from overseas – initially Germany, then Italy, then Japan. The industry retreated at every turn, until eventually there was nowhere left to go.
Whilst car manufacturing may have faced slightly different challenges, many are the same, and the outcome was the same as well. I’ll leave it to you to decide how relevant you think the conclusions are to the fate of the British car industry.
Book: The Strange Death of the British Motorcycle Industry
The British motor cycle industry once stood ‘at the top level of world production’. BSA, Ariel, Norton, Triumph, Matchless and Vincent led the world in design, technology, and popularity. After 1945, when the German industry failed to develop, British bikes continued to be untouchable both on the racetrack and in the showroom.
Then it all began to go horribly wrong. Lucrative overseas markets began to decline, and foreign scooters tore into the UK market. At the same time, rates of motorcycle accidents rose and many British consumers were deciding to buy cars instead of two-wheelers.Finally there came a whirlwind from the East, as fierce competition arrived from innovative, sophisticated and more mechanically reliable Japanese machines. By the early 1970s, with alarming rapidity, the British motor cycle industry had all but disappeared.
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