1965 BSA Starlite 75. Owner: Vincent Schardt, Danville, California.
Cute name, BSA Beagle. Dog names for motorcycles were not unusual in England, as with the Triumph Terrier of the early 1950s. But when this little motorcycle got to the United States, the word Beagle on the gas tank was gone, replaced by Starlite. Pretty boring.
Here was the essential commuter bike, a mildly attractive machine with a 75cc single-cylinder, four-stroke engine with a 9.5:1 compression ratio, which could put out some five horsepower at the crankshaft…somewhat less at the rear wheel.
The BSA folk had looked at the small-bike market around 1960 and realized that the original 125cc D1 Bantam was getting pretty long in the tooth. After all, it had originated in 1948 as part of German reparations after World War II, and was actually a DKW 125 which BSA had flipped around in order to have the gear shift and kickstarter on the right side, traditionally English. And the English do like tradition. The Beagle/Starlite’s 75cc engine was a bored-out version of the 50cc single used in the Ariel Pixie.
The Italians had been selling their small bikes in England for several years, and now companies like Honda were looking to expand their markets. It was decided that the D1 Bantam should be dropped, and a smaller, cheaper motorbike would replace it. Ariel, a company wholly owned by BSA, was also thinking about a small bike. Edward Turner, now head of the BSA group, put pen to paper and came up with ...