Is it time for a British revival?
By TMX Archives on 7th Oct 10
With the all-new Ossa factory about to start production of its revolutionary trials bike is it time for a British fightback..?
THERE has been a hell of a lot of interest in the recent revival of the Spanish Ossa brand. I use the word deliberately as this is not a revival of the Ossa factory as such.
The organisation is all-new, it simply uses the iconic Ossa name. Nothing wrong with that, the all-new Triumph Motorcycles company in Britain, which continues to churn-out a succession of awesome road bikes (unfortunately not off-road bikes although it does do a very tasty and expanding Adventure bike range) continues to go from strength to strength despite (more likely because of) it having no direct links to the original company, save of course for the all-important name.
The origin of this piece is of course the Ossa revival, I even have a keen personal interest as I rode Ossa for several years back in the day. Sadly, 12 months after me jumping on board, the company was forced to close its doors. Not my fault for once as at least my cash kept the workers in cigarillos for a day or two.
Yes, that was back when all Spanish bike factories sported a pile of empty wine bottles and an even bigger pile of ciggy stubs by the back door.
Great days for some, now gone forever. But what got me thinking was, how come Spain, and Italy for that matter, can continue to host small-number motorcycle manufacturers and equally, why can't we in Britain?
Spain can boast Gas Gas, Sherco (now also Scorpa) and now the new Ossa. It can also boast the much larger Derbi factory and also Rieju which is currently doing very nicely in the trail bike market. Italy has the likes of Beta and TM, the latter managing to build several types of its very own state-of-the-art MX/Enduro engines, both two-stroke and four-stroke, despite actually building relatively small numbers of each.
Not every small factory, or large one come to that, is a runaway success story of course and the Euro route is littered with companies whose stars shone brightly for a while, sometimes for more than a while, but are now mere memories. Bultaco and Ossa and the original Montesa in Spain, SWM, Garelli, Gori and Villa in Italy are just a handful that spring to mind off the top of my head. There are many more if I really put my thinking cap on.
Nevertheless, nothing seems to stop our Mediterranean cousins skecthing out a rough plan on the back of a beer mat followed by risking all and giving it a go. The old Spanish companies, Bultaco, Montesa etc, were originally kept going by the country's cast-iron import rules enforced during the Franco regime, and they collapsed pretty quickly when Spain joined the real world again. But out of the ashes sprang new companies like Gas Gas and later Sherco. And they are still there. Yes, they have had their problems, some of them pretty big, but the enthusiasm lives on.
Which brings us to Ossa. Can there have been a worse time in recent history to launch a new motorcycle company, let alone one specialising in trials bikes? The world's economy is balanced on a knife edge and if you believe the news reports, Spain is in a worse fix than most Western countries. Yet someone is confident enough to launch a fledgling trials company.
Yes, I know that in the past such factories have been able to blag some very tidy grants, from the EU (ie: from us), local government, etc, etc. But I can assure you that definitely isn't the case now. At least not with Ossa it isn't, this is a totally privately financed venture. And good luck to them. Any tiny firm that can give the conglomerates a run for their money gets my vote.
Many of us still love the idea of a gifted engineer, bashing away in a shed at dead of night, outwitting 100 bodies employed in any giant Japanese R&D shop.
So, what about us? Isn't it time that Britain climbed back on board the manufacturing wagon? This used to be what we did best, in a fashion. In the 1920s there were over 100 British motorcycle firms.
In the 1950s and 1960s there were still the likes of Greeves, Dot, Cotton, Sprite, James, etc.
In recent years CCM alone has flown any kind of off-road flag, usually a proud Union Jack. And very recently Richard Deal has been working away to re-launch the Greeves name with an ambitious trials project.
Britain still has some incredible engineering brains. There are many beacons of light in the world of manufacture in this country with the likes of Talon Engineering, DEP exhausts, Renthal etc, and that's without tapping into the likes of the F1 engineering community.
The latter certainly has the capability but just might struggle to get its head around the type of cash available in the off-road world which would demand an entire bike for less than the cost of an F1 suspension strut.
There are certainly the people out there who could do the job. The classic world is packed full of talented engineers busy knocking out frames, hubs, shocks, tanks, exhausts, etc, etc.
And firms such as world renowned cycle parts manufacturer Hope Engineering (run by trials aces Ian Weatherill and Simon Sharp) could turn out some really wicked brakes...