Regardless of the practicality or real significance, I think it would be pretty cool if Mahindra bought this building (and adjacent nearby property, if necessary) to set up shop in the Midlands.
Richard L.
But cool does not cut the mustard or pay the bills .
One of the contributing factors to the demise of BSA and the entire British motor industry for that matter, was working from inappropriate buildings which pushed the unit price of every bike way higher than it needed to be .
Allister Cave knew this which is why he was behind the push to shift all assembly from Small Heath to the new factory at Coventry and use the Small Heath solely as a parts manufacturing facility.
The buildings at Small Heath were all purpose built for making guns using natural light.
Rifles are small things so shoveling them all around the factory is no where near as expensive as shifting motorcycles around.
Finding appropriate land in the Midlands for expansion was ( and still is ) a major problem .
Jaguar bought Daimler from BSA purely & simply to acquire the land . They had no plans for the marque, they just needed the space.
There was an interesting video cross posted on the WM20 web page which outlined the movement of the motorcycles at the Plumsted works during assembly.
No wonder they made so few bikes, there would have been more workers shuffleing them within and from building to building than here was assembling bikes.
Up one floor then down a ramp into another lift ,up to the roof to get clean access to another lift to take the bike to the basement to do a simple job then through a tunnel to the building across the road, up 3 floors, down two, etc , etc then the finished bikes had to sit on the street .
Brad Jones makes it very clear that Slumberglades was totally inappropriate for use as a R & D headquarters due to restrictions on building new structures on the site or even modifing the existing structures due to it being a registered historical site , apparently Hesketh sufferred the same restrictions .
So no wonder all of the attempts to revive the British Motorcycle industry have failed dismally if you have to shoe horn your production facility into a building that can't accommodate it efficiently .
If Mahindra is going to make a go of it starting off with a compromised production line modified to fit within an inappropriate building already had one hand tied behind their backs.
SO if Mahindra are going to make a go of things they will need a green field site or at least one where a purpose building can be constructed .
