BSA Bantam

The BSA Bantam was a lightweight two-stroke motorcycle produced by the Birmingham Small Arms Company from 1948 into the early 1970s, developed from a captured German DKW design taken as part of postwar reparations. Powered by a small single-cylinder two-stroke engine that grew from an original 123cc to later 175cc versions, the Bantam was prized for its simplicity, light weight and low cost, and it became a common first motorcycle for a generation of British riders as well as a standard training and dispatch machine for the British armed forces and the General Post Office. Well over a quarter of a million were built across its production run, making it one of the best-selling British motorcycles of the postwar era.