BSA m20

The M20 has two interesting facts attached to it. First, it was the most widely built military motorcycle of the Second World War, with a shade over 126,000 units produced. Second, despite the huge numbers of M20s which were manufactured, it was not the most popular motorcycle with the troops who rode into battle. Almost every BSA rider would have dumped their M20 in a ditch, at the first opportunity, in order to have the vastly better Matchless G3L.
The M20 story goes back to 1936 and Britain’s greatest motorcycle designer ever, Val Page. I am a huge fan of Valentine Page, and the M20 either shows that he was having a bad day at the office or, more likely, BSA management had really put the knuckle screws on him in terms of cost cutting.

BSA m20

BSA m20

BSA m20

BSA m20

BSA m20

BSA m20

BSA m20

BSA m20

BSA m20

BSA m20

The aim was to produce a dull as ditch water, 500cc side-valve Single with a lot of torque. The job of this unworthy steed would be to plod around British roads, pulling a sidecar which would contain Mum, three kids and the family dog. When you realize that BSA were only claiming 13 hp for their new 500 you can see that this was not intended to be a hot sports set-up.

When the bike was first submitted to the Ministry of Defence in 1937 it was rejected, with both the piston and cylinder barrel failing after 6000 miles.

The second batch of prototypes was better, just scraping through the 10,000 mile minimum target and a small lot of M20s were ordered in 1937. There was a tremendous irony in the order. The M20 was heavily criticized by the evaluation team at the Mechanisation Experimental Establishment at Farnborough for being slow, heavy and possessing an extremely low ground clearance.