BSA B33 motorcycle.
Identifying old motorcycles in photographs can be quite tricky, just like with snapshots of older cars. No notes accompany this 1930's photo of a BSA motorcycle, printed on Velox paper, so the only information available is what can be gleaned from studying this side-on view of two people and a pre-war "Beezer".
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Handily, the badge on the fuel tank is visible, confirming the manufacturer - Birmingham Small Arms (BSA). Visible also is the bike's registration plate - reading APC 52, a Surrey series first used in January 1933 according to the PC page, within the registrations section here at OCC.
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Research into the BSA motorcycle range for 1933 brought up an initially-bewildering array of possibilities, however the relatively small front brake assembly whittled down the list of possibilities to three - the B33-1 (249cc sidevalve engine), the B33-2 (with a 249cc OHV engine), and the similar (but sportier) B33-3 Blue Star. A site for BSAs in the Netherlands (link) helped with this. The exhaust downpipe differs between the sidevalve and overhead valve types. The machine that features in the following photograph best matches period illustrations of the basic 249cc sidevalve B33-1, so I'll go with that as an identification unless anyone else can suggest an alternative.
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BSA motorcycles and cars can be found on pages dotted across OCC, the site search will help track down related pages of interest. Other period photograph pages featuring BSAs include this one, on which photographs of the very popular BSA Bantam D1 of the 1950s will be found.
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Return to Page 20 in the motoring photographs archive, or visit the main index here.
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