2024 BSA Gold Star 650 review

BSA is back, baby. Its first product is the Gold Star, a 650 single LAMS retromodern standard bike. At $11k, this has gold written all over it.

Remember BSA when it was in its heyday? If so, you’re probably around 100 years old now. The firm was kaput by the time I first became interested in motorcycles.

Until recently the only BSA I’d ever ridden was a BSA Bantam. We won’t go into that. Good name though.

Anyhow, my second shot at a BSA was literally a half century later. And it’s the first product out of the company that was bought by Mahindra in 2016. They are now producing a reincarnated BSA in India.

It features the same round headlamp design as the original and similar looking analogue instruments sitting above that. 

Google says the original Gold Star was produced between 1938 and 1963 and was available as a 350cc or a 500cc single. So the new bike also uses a single-cylinder engine, a Rotax design.

It is a liquid-cooled 34kW/55Nm 652cc twin-cam fuel-injected 4v engine with a five-speed gearbox. Most rivals are parallel twins with six-speed transmissions. 

Basics done well

But the rest is pretty normal. This is your base LAMS bike in that it has the bits needed to make it functional but no frills. So there’s ABS for the Brembo brakes, an electric starter motor, a dual seat, and period wire-spoke wheels shod with authentic Pirelli Phantom rubber.

A little black box on the left bar is weird. It houses a USB-A and USB-C outlet, for phone charging. You didn’t get that in the sixties.

It looks odd, unlike the engine which is jewel-like, so too the tank, and authentic matte black peashooter pipe out the right side. Just inboard of this is the chain final drive, unusually on the right but that’s how the Brits used to do it.

To behold this is a really sweet design. The cute little LED-style indicators are a nice touch too. When I first picked it up and rode off, I was thinking “something tells me I’m in for something good”.

And that little earworm stuck for the day. 

On subsequent rides, nothing changed. Things just got better. The key thing is that it doesn’t do anything badly, and that’s important on a budget bike. The engine continues to impress.

Robert from Europe Imports said it does 100 okay, and he’s right. But it also does the ‘other’ 100 okay on a long straight, which was a genuine surprise. There’s meant to be a stack of torque from 1500 onwards but we’d say from 2000rpm.

Beneath that there isn’t quite enough to overcome its kerb weight of 213kg. The urge grows progressively from 2000rpm however. In town fourth is best, top gear if it’s not under load.

So it’s a snip to ride in the burbs using 2000-3000rpm, and out of town from 3000-4000 or above if you want. It all just depends on how you’re feeling. At no point do vibrations really intrude, though the mirrors tell a different story.

This is killer good at lane splitting. That’s because it’s narrow, and only has five gears, so second and third are just about right.

In some bikes with six gears, you’re often kind of between cogs when cutting up the cars.

Easy going

The natural gait with this bike is hard to get a bead on. At first I thought it was 80-90km/h, which is 3000-3500rpm in fifth. But later it seemed 90-100 was okay, and then after a bit more time, 100-110 (which is 4000-4500rpm).

But it’s also happy at 120, an even 5000rpm. Only the mirrors aren’t; they’re pretty much useless over 100km/h, and show as much jacket as they do of whatever is behind.

I’d probably go down the bar end mirror path if this was mine.

As to performance, well that was a surprise too. It’s about as quick as a RE 650 SM, and a bit faster than the Triumph Speed 400. And both of these are sharp enough for a spot of fast fun.

Helping is the lightweight, smooth shifting gearbox. I never once thought it needed another gear. At 100km/h in top it is easing along at 4000rpm, 120 is 5000 and 80 is 3000rpm.

The only time you notice it’s a five-cog box is downshifting from fourth to third when you need to blip it a bit more. For overtaking no shift is necessary much of the time, or changing to fourth if you need to get a wriggle on.

Ride well? 

This is essentially a cruiser style standard bike but without the deficiencies of that genre. And those two would be ground clearance – never an issue here – and ride comfort, mainly good except over short, sharp bumps.

A plush and generous seat helps. If you see a grim pothole ahead then merely weighting the pegs is enough to reduce their impact. Handling is good if you don’t mind slowish steering.

The retro-look tyres probably don’t manage quite the lean angles of modern sports rubber either but seemed fine in the dry otherwise.

One final thing; the analogue instruments are set forward of the bars so aren’t especially easy to read. But most of the time you’re not supralegal anyway.

And revs you can gauge by ear. The exhaust note is pithy but not too loud.

We had all sorts of issues with the mirrors. First off, I couldn’t actually adjust them to see what was behind, so that’s a fail. I figured it was because the stems were aiming too far back.

So I moved them forward but still no real improvement. After loosening the bolts for the clutch and brake levers (to which they’re attached), and rotating these they were now showing what was behind, rather than pointing too low.

Moreover, they were showing much less arm than before. Still, blurry above 100 though. 

BSA had to make a decent first of its first revival product and they really have with the $10,990 Gold Star 650 which is covered by a two-year/unlimited km warranty.

I haven’t enjoyed a big single as much as this in a great long while. What’s next from BSA? Bantam maybe? Or Thunderbolt and Lightning?

This article first appeared in the December/January 2025 issue of NZ Autocar magazine.