Note where the engine date on the line for my bike has been changed, that would be to the date when the extra zero was added on the engine serial number.
Perhaps those engines, with the extra zero added, were then put back on the production line and went into the later chassis, in the case of my bike that would be 1968. It's quite possible, otherwise why change the engine number?

We can see how the tally and consignment columns seem to function in close to the same manner in 1969 as they did in 1967.
Gary, would you know if those 1969 dates in the consignment column of this image would be for the Y bike replacements? I don't believe they are but you may know know for sure.

We should try to gather as much of the multiple dispatch date information as we can now.

Is that because of all the later dispatch dates being squeezed in, would the rhythm make more sense if those later dates weren't in there?

Why is that page such a mess compared to the 1969 example I posted earlier. I believe from Gary's descriptions that some of the 1967 pages are very orderly also.

How can anyone possibly make sense out of that entry as it stands.
Is there any order or sequence to any of those entries ?
Crazy stuff really.

Kevin, you are putting far too much effort into ignoring the obvious.

There was no "conspiracy" back in 1967, numbers were entered in the books as they usually were, they did not leave extra space, or blank lines, to facilitate later entries.

As the refurbished bikes were being dispatched for the second time, they tried to squeeze the new information in with the initial entry.

Please give what I've posted here a good think, to me it seems quite obvious.

Yes, it is all looking ok at the despatch date of late 1966 and possibly into 1967.

The problem is we still have not seen entries for the receipt of the bike coming back along with it's associated con note.
We also don't have trace (physically) of the bike or any mention of them in any book.
The BSAOC seem to be the only people mentioning the returned bikes.
They also thought the 1970 bike was the same one....
At least their version is easy in that they don't need to cover the bike disappearing without trace.

That is the next issue I have here.


I am also at a loss to explain the absence of any Hornets being involved in this 'return' process.
I am assuming at this point that no Spitfires were returned either.

Gary has studied these pages and never mentioned any Hornet coming back and going back out again.
I am sure we may have the odd one or two as possibilities. That would be great as we could use them as examples.
I suspect we would see a return receipt for them.

At this stage it looks like the Y bikes may have been derived from a number of shipments. It was not a particular batch that had the problems.

We have all the clues now, especially with the spreadsheet showing clearly the bikes in question.


If there were no shenanigans at a later date is it possible we are looking at a phantom bike scenario ?
The numbers were being made up at he despatch point... the tally numbers should (could) give a clue there though.

In that case the later bikes had to be made, and produced, to even the ledger.

I have mentioned before that this may have all started in 1967.
I am also having Queen's Award thoughts when I think of 1967 despatches as well.

I accept that is a very big call though. Indeed a massive call.

Being creative with figures a couple of years down the track could be a possibility, - shipping phantom bikes is unimaginable really.

What is a reality is that we have not yet seen any survivor, or parts, from the initial shipments of nearly 1500 unit twins.

We have to agree the second bike has no trace of the first bike anywhere near it.

You no doubt mean the Date Despatched column. I assume so, can't verify though. One of the dates their is '68.


I see no correlation with Tally Numbers and the Date Despatched with or without the added dates.


I did not observe any double dates with the Hornets, or at least groups of double dates. But, I did not study ever Hornet entry either. Once in a while, but seldom, there might be a date crossed out with another date added in above it.

You guys are very deep into this matter--which I respect enormously.
I cant add anything to the -Y saga.
However as someone who was working in the UK automotive engineering industry in the Birmingham/Coventry area from 1966 on I can say with clear conviction that the Queens Award for Industry, especially exporting, was a really big thing. And something which a company might well cut a few corners in order to attain/retain.
HTH

Thanks for that Tridentman.
Everything points to BSA putting the pedal to the metal in an effort to get the Queens Award. Looks like they ran it off the track a few times over the course of the year!

Added another batch of numbers from Gary and Kevin, even found a few old ones myself.

BSA Twin Serial Numbers 1967-1970

One thing that is a little more apparent, we now have two dispatch dates for bikes from the 100,000 series on the spreadsheet. The dates are 1968-03-28 and 1968-04-12.

The dispatch dates we have for the hybrid Spitfires are from 1968-04-12 to 1968-04-24.

Interesting.

Thanks for the comments Tridentman.

As you can see there are many unanswered questions.

I think each of us doing the research here could easily be swayed into Queen's Awards qualifying associations.
The award was newly announced in 1965 and BSA must have recognised the merit in gaining such a Certificate.

From my research I was unable to determine who was awarded the recognition. Was it BSA or the BSA/Triumph group ?
Has anyone got access to the citation that accompanied the award ?
Can we confirm it was for export excellence, - the name varied a little over the years.

If you were going to get 'creative' with the export logs then why weren't the singles affected.
Is now an appropriate time to mention that I have seen mention of annotations in the despatch books for a number of B44.
We have also seen photos of B44 with the Y stamping on the number area. Not a Dash Y but more of an isolated 'Y'.
I have seen two pics of bikes with it.
Whether they were 1967 models I don't know. I thought a little later.
B44B 3019 B is one of them. Would that make it a 1968 model ?


As John keeps reminding me, we have the very real possibility these bikes were made.

The riddle remains however.
Why no Hornets
Why the Hybrid Spitfires (in a block at that)
Why is there no sign or mention of these bikes ?

We should not forget that Al Cave and the BSAOC do mention these bikes.
The problem we have with that is they were supposed to be in storage for a period before being rebuilt in 1969 and 1970.
The reality there is that none of us here know anything about the physical existence of any of those bikes.

No press articles, company reports, photographs or mention in any book.
The 'Complete and Absolutely Accurate Uncensored Historical Publication on All Things BSA' doesn't even mention them.

Has anyone ever read any book by Don Brown or quoting him ?

Don Brown: Vice President, General Manager and Director BSA, Inc. 1967 to 1969; reassigned as Vice President, National BSA Sales; resigned Jan 8, 1970; formerly, General Sales Manager Johnson Motors (JoMo) 1956-1965

.

http://www.craigvetter.com/pages/motorcycle_designs/Hurricane_Pages/Main%20Hurricane%20page.html



http://www.craigvetter.com/pages/motorcy...20Chap%201.html

I really do believe some of these guys must have known about it and with the in-fighting they talk about I am surprised it has never been mentioned.

We still have the same issue...

The bikes are there in the books for all to see.

No sign or word of them however.
Look at the Hybrid Spitfires, almost 500 bikes disappear in less than a year,- only to be replaced by the last bikes off the production line.
(Where were those bikes for those months ?)

And yes, this was the year of the Queens Award.
I believe it was awarded in April 1968.

http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/44568/supplements/4521/page.pdf



John has just reminded us the Hybrids were being despatched in mid April that year. 12th to the 24th are the dates we have at the moment.

" By 1966 both BSA and Triumph had been awarded the Queen’s Award for Export Achievement, awards that were repeated
the following year." Heaton's thesis, Page 120.

I don't believe the dispatch of the hybrids was nearly soon enough to be a factor in the Queens Award for 1967.

Just found another gem in Heaton's thesis, page 130, something that hadn't registered with me previously.



I think we know the big picture now.

http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/77/1/Heaton07PhD.pdf

Looking for Page 130 now. You may well be on to something.

'Getting rid of' is not a term you would associate with export excellence.

Post-event Statement to the Shareholders
(7th October 1971, MRC/MSS/19B/TB2).

‘The loss was due to the dislocation of production in the motorcycle division,
which led to low output prior to the U.S. selling season. This was attributable
to delays in completing the design and development of new models. It would
be idle to deny that errors in management contributed to this situation. Present
indications are that the original estimates of a Group loss of approximately
£3m for the year ending 31st July 1971, to which would be added an
exceptional provision of £1m in respect of product rationalisation measures,
will not be exceeded’.
The cash implications of the delays were horrendous. The statement went on:
‘In terms of cash the shortfall against plan last year in the motorcycle division
was £7m. The Group’s bank indebtedness currently amounts to some £10m’.
While the cost of disposing 1967 bikes was £729,000, it was even higher,
£843,000, for getting rid of the 1970 machines, excluding return transport
costs’. (BSA Accounts, 1967/68 and 1970/71).

Hmm,

All part of the blame game isn't it.

The new models would be the Rocket III, the Fury and the Ariel 3. The A70 would have to be read in there somewhere also.

I saw mention of engine development earlier in the report as well. Again that would not be A65 related as they only did minor minor model changes as indeed the A65 engine evolved year by year.

Were they also saying the market was bigger than they could supply ?
That seems strange, especially if they had surplus bikes sitting around.

I can see writing off the loses of the Fury and Ariel 3 as being disposal costs in 1971.

What disposal costs were involved in 1967, and what does the word mean.... in accounts lingo ?

EDIT

Oh they are talking about disposing of 1970 models..
Well what bikes would they be then ?


Is that disguised talk for having to produce bikes at an additional expense.

Like having to make 1000 bikes in 1969/1970. But you would go on to sell them surely.

We are still not seeing the words, 'reduce to spares' or 'scrap'.

I did see mention of return transport however.

Hmm, plot thickens.

Could the mystery of the 1500 missing 1967 twins be somewhere in that document ?

Further EDIT

I think that getting rid of cost could possibly be the hit taken in selling bikes at a discounted rate.
It is accountant talk after all. If they expected to sell a bike for $1500 and had to discount it to $1100 to sell then an accountant would see that as a $400 loss.
'
I can't see it being 'dispose of' or 'getting rid off' in sensible language. Heads would be rolling surely if a cash-strapped company carried on like that.

We still have another unanswered question, - Why would you make any brand new bike in 1970 and then stamp 1967 numbers onto it ?

Perhaps we should be starting at that point...

This was all new sounding and I can see many errors in his thesis. The errors are mainly in selective quotes and quoting out of context.

http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/44294/supplements/4471/page.pdf

Well there it is. Awarded an Export Certificate in 1966.
That was the very first year it was offered.
86 Companies gained the award so it must have been quite something. 48 companies scored it in 1967, a sizeable decrease in numbers.

EDIT
http://www.billymegawatt.com/uploads/6/8...le-industry.pdf

Some good reading here also. Pages about P160.

Hi Kevin,


Bandit/Fury yes, Ariel 3 possibly, A70 I doubt, R3 no - A70 was essentially a long-stroke A65, which shouldn't have cost much to develop; the differences between '70 and '71 R3's were cosmetic, along with the rest of the BSA and Triumph ranges.

The "new models" were the oif twins, particularly the Triumph 650's, where allegedly line workers sat around for weeks playing draughts with valve springs while they waited for Umberslade Hall to come up with a way of fitting the engine in the oif.


I believe most, if not all of that would be Bandit/Fury.


Uh-uh, they'd just simply failed to supply the US, particularly Triumph, 650 market. None of these "sitting around" and 500's and triples, or BSA's, couldn't be substituted at short notice, even if the oif problems hadn't affected the A65/A50.


Ime, you wouldn't. If bikes were being dismantled, a 'net disposal cost' would be, say, the wages of the staff doing the dismantling, less a price for the parts recovered and the scrap value of the other parts.


In accountancy terms, BSA in GB is selling the bikes to a separate company, even though it's BSA in the US; whatever US BSA sold a bike for (and they in turn are selling it to the dealer) is nothing to do with the accounts of GB BSA.

That said, I can see, if US BSA couldn't sell a lot of bikes at a projected price, depending where the reason for that failure lay, GB BSA might 'support' any discount US BSA might make ...

Hth.

Regards,

Thanks again for that clarification Stuart.
We know you have a knowledge of Triumph and the issues there.

Did they have any similar issues around 1967 ?

I can see BSA had a bad year in 1968 but that was for a variety of reasons. I think the Rocket III being late into the market plus the shipping strikes before Xmas 1967 delayed many of the bikes arriving at the peak selling season, early Spring 1968.
Surely Triumph had similar electrical supply issues, shipping and Trident problems.

What were Triumph total sales 1967 and 1968 ?
Someone here will have BSA figures to hand, possibly 30,000 for 1967

I did read that USA made up 90% of the market by 1969 and that sales had quadrupled since 1963 (probably in Dollar terms).
The problem there being the Japs had done even better.

Have you any idea why BSA would build batches of brand new bikes and punch old S/N onto them.

I mean that in the context of your knowledge of Triumph and the export trade.

BSA really do seem to have misplaced 1500 bikes. Some owners of the replacement bikes think their bike evolved from the earlier bike.
No way can I accept that.
There is nothing at all from the earlier bike that we can see on the later bikes.
I am convinced they were scratch built brand new jobs.
The 1969 frame is different from the earlier one, yes, but not so much it couldn't be modified.

Just the fairing lugs and condensor bridge would have it looking similar. There are a couple of UNF tapped threads and different swing-arm.
We have seen examples of earlier swing-arms but they may not have been on Y bikes. That could just be a BSA'ism.
The big thing with the frame really is the number pad.
The new frame looks similar, the number is the same, but now stamped using the latter stamp set. They all have the new font used from Sept 1968 onwards.


You have to wonder about the market for 1000 stamped frames.
The Hybrid Spitfires could have conceivably used the same frame but with new engine and forks etc.

I would surmise that BSA USA was a wholly owned subsidiary of BSA UK.
As such the accounts of BSA USA would be consolidated (included) in the BSA Group accounts.
So discounts from BSA UK to BSA USA or from BSA USA to US dealers would all be included in the BSA Group accounts (it would all come out in the wash).
HTH

another Y bike

http://s106.photobucket.com/user/eldomike/library/1967%20BSA%20Spitfire?sort=3&page=1

I can't quite make out the frame number but it appears to be 16xxx. The bike is a MkIII and will be a Dash Y bike probably.

It does not have Mk IV features of the Hybrids. They have a new 1968 engine along with the tls front wheel. They are a Mk IV in every respect indeed.

This would look exactly like the first use of the numbers, the bikes that are no longer about.

I think the number is right up there with the first use of the hybrid numbers. Can anyone read it ?

Thanks for the link. Cheers.

The other pictures show the engine number to be A65SA 15471-Y.

Oh, ok. Thanks John.
That is outside the range of interest at the moment then.

How many more days of this have we got before you crack it ?

Something must be about to happen...

It's not me Kevin, it's all of us who chip away at it from every direction, all of us who contribute. You are the one who has really pushed the search for the answers, you're the one that's been trying to solve this for longer than anyone else.

We're pretty much there now, we just have to round up as many of the multiple dispatch date entries, from those 1967 books, as we can. It's not so much the serial numbers now.
The picture is getting clearer by the day!

Not really. By manipulating the accounts so the profits appeared on the books in the country with the lower tax rate significant savings would result. The same for losses (real or apparent), which could be used to offset profits from previous years and reduce the current year's tax burden in whichever country it was most convenient to record those losses. Closing these sorts of "tax loopholes" are what many economic plans put forward during political campaigns for as long as I can remember rely on to balance national budgets.

Yes--shifting the profits/losses around from country to country is what most multinational companies do in order to reduce taxes.And as you say it is a favorite target of the politicians as elections loom.
But on consolidation in Group accounts all of the shuffling around in terms of transfer prices and profits cancels each other out ---theoretically leaving the "real" result in terms of sales and profits.
Having said that , in the first company I ran, after the end of the Financial Year I asked the CFO what the profit line was looking like. He replied" whatever you want it to be".
So all profits/losses IMHO need to be treated with more than a pinch of salt.
The most reliable number to gage how a company is doing is not profit/loss but cash.