How Britain's Motorcycles Became Inferior to Japan's

Read the first chapter of How Britain Stopped Making Things free: https://mettlehistory.co.uk ___________________________________________ For most of the twentieth century, if you rode a motorcycle, the machine you wanted came out of the English Midlands. The Triumph Bonneville. The BSA Gold Star. The Norton Commando. Bikers across America, across continental Europe, across the entire Commonwealth were obsessed with them. Fast forward to 1975. The Big Three are finished. The Triumph factory is occupied by its own workers. BSA has been swallowed. Norton is collapsing. And the Japanese hold the great majority of world motorcycle production. What most people don't know is that the man who built the machine that made the British collapse irreversible had announced — in writing, fifteen years before — exactly what he intended to do. He pledged his "entire heart and soul" to defeating Britain at its own race. The plan was on record. Three named British executives saw the warnings and chose to look the other way. This is the story of how the Honda CB750 killed the British Motorcycle Industry.