Lost British engineering

[Marc Montgomery]

interesting, that way back when, the Japanese were buying up lots of old British motorcycles, and reverse engineered them...Looked at the basic theory, and the actual constrution. The theory behind Brit design was pretty sound, the realization however much less so..The Japanese simply improved on some of the basic concepts, and voila, the jap bike invasion of the 70s began ...

would you agree-disagree that.... historically the Brits had wonderful and innovative theories, concepts and designs, but historically were also hampered by a failure to further develop and build upon those concepts and were bypassed by others?
and more so in civilian areas,..hampered by poor quality control and labour strife?

[Richard Farrant]

Originally Posted by Marc Montgomery

would you agree-disagree that.... historically the Brits had wonderful and innovative theories, concepts and designs, but historically were also hampered by a failure to further develop and build upon those concepts and were bypassed by others?
and more so in civilian areas,..hampered by poor quality control and labour strife?

Marc,

It is true that Britain led in a lot of fields of engineering, but others came along a developed on what we were doing. Take the Austin Morris Mini, innovative in design layout and once in production, only improved in small ways to keep the costs down, but others seeing it were able to capitalise on what they saw. As for motorcycles, some of the Jap machines were very similar to BSA, Triumph, etc. It is always the same in any field, the first to come up with a good design is a genius, but it is those that develop that design who usually come out smelling of roses.

[Lang]

Richard,

Have you read "Whatever Happened to the British Motorcycle Industry" by Bert Hopwood? It is a littany of unmitigated marketing incompetence, penny pinching and hopeless quality control going back to the 1920's. In the pre-60 period they had bikes the Americans (their main market) wanted - for some reason the Americans continued to build what is now called a "cruiser" and very few "sports" bikes.

The British manufacturers drove the American distributors insane with irregular supply, bad quality control and refusal to update their designs to meet the market. At the peak of their power in the late 60's the boss of Triumph visited Japan and in a very rare flash of prescience announced to the board on his return that the British motorcycle industry is finished.

The British have many firsts in engineering (as have lots of countries around the world) but very little of it started from a blank sheet of paper. They had brilliant engineers who rearranged ideas into something beyond the original concept eg the first Landrover used 90% of the WW2 jeep mechanical design and the mini owed a lot to Citroen whose cars had been propelled by the front wheels for 25 years previously.

Engineers are coming up with the most brilliant designs all the time. It is the man who can say there is a use or market for this stuff to convince the investors to come who is the real father of the concept. If you have an engineer who can also see a market for his idea then you have a great start. Unfortunately time does not stand still like in Britain and others adopt a good idea and meet the CUSTOMER'S EXPECTATIONS. Their improvements are market driven.

Lang

[Richard Farrant]

Originally Posted by Lang

Have you read "Whatever Happened to the British Motorcycle Industry" by Bert Hopwood? It is a littany of unmitigated marketing incompetence, penny pinching and hopeless quality control going back to the 1920's. In the pre-60 period they had bikes the Americans (their main market) wanted - for some reason the Americans continued to build what is now called a "cruiser" and very few "sports" bikes.

Hi Lang,

Yes I have read that book, and do understand what you say. I was an avid buyer of BSA motorcycles when they were still in production, and would not think of buying a Jap bike, they certainly did not turn me on, in fact the next best to Brit bikes to me was Italian and I had two new Moto Guzzi bikes, but that is another story.

As a point of interest, BSA started producing front wheel drive cars in 1929, that is five years before Citroen came out with front wheel drive !

I suppose what ever example we pick out, someone will have thought of something similar before that !

cheers, Richard

[Lang]

You're right Richard. nothing new under the sun.

The first front wheel drive vehicles were steam carriages of the mid 1800's but they had steering on the back wheels. The first front wheel drive AND steer vehicle that I can find was 1896!

Lang

[Stuart Kirkham]

Doxford shipyards today.

[bill m]

Excellent link thanks Mike!
cheers
Bill.