Simple ceefer
In the last couple of years, BSA’s humble C15 has been making a bit of a surprising comeback. Some prominent BSA buffs have opted for the tidy 250cc unit single as a daily driver, and more.
The bottom line is a relatively low price today, allied to simplicity, easy starting, a good spares situation, and light weight for a full-size machine– the C15 weighed just 280lbs dry, 65lbs heavier than a Tiger Cub, but 30lbs lighter than its predecessor, the pre-unit C12. Top dollar for a C15 is around £3000, and usually they’re considerably less. The keeper of this 1963 sports version, the SS80, acquired it complete for £1500.
Yet these entry-level machines, as marque specialist Owen Wright noted, are usually “remembered with a mixture of love and loathing . Love as a generation’s “first proper motorbike” and the opposite due to a number of inbuilt flaws. These were mainly due to their over-hasty introduction, plus their Terrier/Tiger Cub origins, which could mean regular down-time for their young owners.
The Cub lineage is not in dispute, the main difference being that the C15 carried its cylinder upright and not slanted forward. BSA man Norman Vanhouse wrote that Triumph boss Edward Turner, just promoted to chief of the BSA Group’s Automotive Division, …sent Ernie Webster, then head of BSA design, to Meriden
