AMD 258 January 2021 American Motorcycle Dealer 258 Jan 2021 | Page 4

The Coventry Motorcycle Corridor

As the Indian motorcycle industry ' majors ' continue to jockey for

global bragging rights , Mahindra ( and Mahindra ) is returning its star motorcycle industry brand acquisition to its roots by deploying the BSA brand back in the UK from whence it came . All the ' players ' in the Indian motorcycle market have been either forging strategic partnerships with , investing in or acquiring heritage or European brands and opportunities ( TVS / Norton , Eicher / Royal Enfield , Bajaj / KTM and Triumph , Hero / H-D ), but none more so than Mahindra . Having converted its 49 % stake in Peugeot Scooters ( France ) into 100 % ownership of the renamed Peugeot Motorcycles ( only the oldest motorcycle manufacturer in the world !) and having acquired the formerly Czech owned and operated JAWA brand , Mahindra ' s biggest potential coup was the 2016 acquisition of the dormant but iconic and storied BSA brand . With the fall-out from the 2008-2010 financial crisis and massive demographic changes poised to fuel an explosion in demand for reasonably priced light and middleweight motorcycles in Europe and North America , it is ' heritage ' brands that are in the driving seat for their ability to " Speak Millennial " to the new retro-facing , ' Alt Moto ' and hugely brand sensitive generations of younger consumers - the ones who hold the future of our industry in their pay checks . Pending the final shape and fall-out of the United Kingdom ' s embarrassingly foolish exit from the European Union , what I hadn ' t considered was the possibility that Mahindra ( the world ' s largest tractor manufacturer btw !) would actually take a leaf out of the Eicher Motors / Royal Enfield playbook and drop anchor in England - thereby creating a brand critical mass back in the historic crucible of the industry . Personally , I had connected the opening of the Roxor UTV / SxS production line in Michigan with its ownership of the BSA brand , and saw vast flocks of U . S . made 21st century BSA iterations jauntily racing across the golden sunlit uplands of business opportunity . Indeed , that could well yet be the case , because by initially imbuing the brand with the essence of authenticity back in the UK , as billionaire chairman Anand Mahindra clearly recognizes , it will have bought the right to be able to allow additional production capacity to go forth and multiply . After the golden years of the late 1940s through the early 1960s , the incestuous and failing world of the British motorcycle industry was characterized by bankruptcies , mergers and acquisitions - all within a 30-mile radius of Coventry , in the heart of England , and where , as it happens , yours truly grew up . For a while BSA actually owned Triumph , which made it the world ' s largest motorcycle manufacturer for around 15 years . Famous for models such as the Bantam , Gold Star and Rocket , the decline of the 1960s and the amalgamation into Norton-Villiers- Triumph saw the last BSA-badged machine produced in 1973 . I personally can remember the chaos and carnage of those days of industrial dysfunction only too well . I had friends , parents of friends and neighbors who had been working at various of the motorcycle factories at various times , and I can remember only too well the sense of the mighty fallen that imbued the industry as it hurtled to its doom . At a time when Japanese competition was teaching consumers to rather quite like state-of-the-art creature comforts such as oil-tight engines , electric starting , reliability ,

motorcycles of character

warranties , improved handling , performance and safety ( including brakes that actually , you know , worked !), I was growing up no more than five miles from the notorious People ' s Republic of Meriden where the unions were fighting tooth and nail against the change that was needed to be able to compete . It was there that the final , ill-fated Triumph drama played out to the sounds of the Red Flag being sung as workers stuck it to those stinking capitalist pig-dogs . I listened in awe to the stories about how the factories all started , how they all ( well , mostly ) boomed , but then how they all mostly collapsed within years of each other . I think it was those stories and witnessing it play out first-hand in the pages of our local newspaper that sowed the seeds of my utter contempt for the role of unions in the UK in the second half of the twentieth century . The proposed new BSA factory in Coventry will be just 20 miles west from Royal Enfield ' s Bruntingthorpe , UK headquarters , 15 miles south of Triumph Motorcycles ' Hinckley UK HQ , and 15 miles east of the planned new Norton Motorcycle manufacturing facility at Solihull , Birmingham - the one that former Harley-Davidson Europe president John Russel has lined-up for them in his capacity as interim Norton CEO on behalf of their new Indian owners TVS . With Triumph itself engaged in a non-equity light and medium displacement partnership with Bajaj , another of the ' Big Five ' Indian powersports industry players ( they of KTM part ownership fame ), that only leaves former Buell partner Hero MotorCorp not engaged in the UK ' s ' Motorcycle Corridor ' - though they do have a tech center in Munich , Germany , and , as of 2019 , a sweetheart deal with Harley . So even it hasn ' t proven to be exactly immune from the gravitational pull of the ' Western ' powersports industry in the 21st century . As the market started to dust itself off from the devastating impacts of the 2007- 2011 financial crisis and tried to rebuild from the 2014 nadir , I was regularly referring to a new demand opening up for so-called ' motorcycles of character .' Simple machines that delivered the visceral qualities of riding that had built the industry . It was clear that we needed to open up a new price-point if we were to re-engage with young consumers and riders , and that a new demographic dynamic was starting to shift the crosshairs of the business away from crotch rockets with acres of plastic and miles of plumbing . Many referred to it as a demographic timebomb and conflated changed buying habits with the impact of the digital shopping revolution and social media - like it was somebody else ' s fault that our market ' s products were no longer selling . For me it was always a dynamic opportunity , not a death knell . The change that has taken place , and is continuing to take place , is as dramatic as the rise of the ' Boomers ' and the Easy Rider generation were . Now the results and opportunities afforded by those and the resulting manufacturer changes are coming to fruition , and guess what ? People want to buy motorcycles again . Hurrah !
Robin Bradley Co-owner / Editor-in-Chief robin @ dealer-world . com