Article de Lindsay Brooke paru dans Classic-Bike Août 1989.

J'ai ajouté des illustrations trouvées sur Internet.

In 1965, Matt Guzzetta (1) was just a bright young college kid pursuing a dream. As a second year student at California's prestigious Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles,Guzzzetta was consumed by dual passions: making is mark as an industrial designer, and building a 500cc streamliner motorcycle to run  during Speed Week at Bonneville Salt Flats (2).Little did  he  then realize that within three years, he'd be witnessing the self-destruction of the  British  motorcycle industry while employer atv its major R&D centre.

(1) Matt Guzzetta


(2) Speed Week at Bonneville Salt Flats


Guzzetta needed a power-plant  for is streamliner, so he contacted Don Brown, head of sales at the famous US Triumph dealer  Johnson  Motors.Brown helped secure a T100 engine (3) for the young  designer, who impressed him with is fresh thinking and ideas  about motorcycle design and styling.

(3) T100 engine


In fact, Don Brown was so impressed  that two years later, as vice-president of BSA's American operation, he asked Guzzetta to design and built  some tank/seat units for BSA management,using a variety of production methods. Guzzetta's components flowed together, much like those of the later Vetter Hurricane, and the Beeza brass was impressed.

They hired Guzzetta upon graduation - a three-year contract with one of the world's most revered motorcycle makers.And to top it off, he was being sent to work in England!

'BSA had never actually had an American live and work in England,' Guzzeta recalls. 'Don had mentioned they wanted someone who could give a direct  American view to the designers and engineers  in England, but could also explain to the Americans what was going on over there. The American view and the English view were not necessarily the same, and that hade been one of the company's big problems.

'Guzzetta new post in Britain was at Umberslade Hall (4) , the stately mansion equidistant from Meriden (5) and Birmingham (6) that BSA/Triumph had recently purchased for use  as its R&D headquaters.The company's rationale for the place was that by moving all 300 of its design engineers into one location and by adding experts and scientists from other industries, it could drastically
accelerate its forward product developpement and meet  the increasingly tough Japanese  challenge head-on.

(4) Umberslade Hall


(5) Meriden


(6) Birmingham Small Heath


Unfortunately, it didn't pan out that way. Umberslade was soon nicknamed 'Slumberglade' by those  at Meriden and Small Heath (6) who quickly saw that the old manor, with its fountains and peacocks, has become a grandiose 'black hole'for prodigious quantities of money, with little real return in engineering ingenuity or product quality.

When he started there in 1968, Matt Guzzetta's first assignements were on two illfated projects already begun:the three-wheeled Ariel 3 scooter (7) , and the stillborn 350cc dohc twins (.He did some detail work on the trike's injection-moulded plastic and stamped wheels, and describes the project as 'BSA's Edsel,' a reference to Ford's infamous car flop.

(7) Three-wheeled Ariel 3 scooter


( 350cc dohc twins


The twin-cam 350 had been designed by Edward Turner (9) himself while semi-retired, and when Guzzetta  joined Umberslade the project was in a state of chaos. The machines were sheduled for 1970 production as '71 models, and the company was already hyping them to its dealers.

(9) Edward Turner


'As Ed Turner had designed the bike, it looked like a big Tiger Cub (10) ,' says Guzzetta.'The engineers  I Worked with allsaid he under-bearinged the motor, witch was only one of its problems.It went real fast, but wouldn't last long.They were basically redesigning and rebuilding the bike from the crank up when I came on board.'

(10) Tiger Cub


Since the 350's engine was ill designed for production, the Umberslade crew was scrambling madly.'They were doing the drawings,making hard tooling and doing prototypes all at the same time,'Guzzetta recalls. 'They were really strung out on the line.'

'I went down to the basement at Umberslade and put together,in two or three days, a polyurethane foam and balsa wood model from the drawings of the engine to see  what the thing  would look like,as the engine to see what the thing would look like,as the engineers didn't even know,' he says. 'Thenwerealized we had to makesome more changes toimprove its appearance.'

To the young Californian,Umberslade was a study incontradictions. In some departements, scientists wereconducting pu research intothe deep recesses of motorcycle design theory. Some areas  of the buiding were computerized, and modern dyno cells and a state-of-the-art machine shop were being added. Yet when Guzzetta requested some of the simple electric hande tools he had used in the States - a belt-sander, for instance - they had to be ordered from the US.

'That wasn't necessarily BSA's fault; it was just one of the quirks about England,' he says.'But Wednesdays at Umberslade used to shock me. That was the day Motor cycle News (11) came out, and all through the place you'd see people sitting with their feet up on their desks, readingit for hours. They used to say "Monday,Tuesday,Motor Cycle News Day."I was in the military for four years,so it wasn'tthe first time I had seen people sitting around a lot.'

(11) Motor cycle News


Guzzetta  notes that one of his biggest frustrations about Umberslade was that altthough the facility had many good, talented people, the projects often seemed to fizzle out for one reason or another. 'One day I walked into a draughting room and noticed a beautiful alloy casting this guy was using as  a footstool.I asked him what  it was and he told me it was the cylinderhead from the 250cc dohc triple the company had built for the 250 GP wars.

'They had everything built for that but the transmission,which was going to be an eight-speeder,'he says,'butthey never put it together to fire it up!There was a small room in the building filled with pieces for this motor.'

During Guzzetta's short time at Umberslade, the Japanese launched perhaps their two most important bikes of the late '60's - the Yamaha DT1 enduro (12) and Honda's 750 four (13).What was the view of these two milestone machines from within Umberslade Hall?

(12) Yamaha DT1 enduro


(13) Honda's 750 four


'They let me take the first Yamaha we got over some of the miles of dirt roads around Umberslade,' Guzzetta recalls.'I came back impresed; it really felt good.But all the BSA guys did was knockits lack of top speed.You see,most of them were motocrossers, in their off-times.'

In 1969, Guzzetta and some colleagues from Umbersladeattended tle London Motorcycle Show, where the Honda four was first display in Britain.
He remenbers comments from some of the BSA engineers:'Its too bloody wide;it can't possibly handle; it'll never sell!'

Guzzetta did some final work on the BSA B25 (14) and B50MX (15) singles and packed it in late in 1969, two years before his contract was up.
He cites a personality conflict with his boss as the reason for leaving,but says he and others in design group saw the writing on the wall.

(14) BSA B25


(15) B50MX


'I truly had a blast working in England;I learned a lot and met some fantastic people at Umberslade and at the factories,' says Guzzetta, who as since worked for Don Vesco (16) as a designer, contributing suspension input on Vesco's word speed record bike .

(16) Don Vesco


Guzzetta's latest projets as an independant designer include a high-tech archery bow and a zero bump-steer design (17) for car suspensions, the latter an idea he first had while working on a racing sidecar rig with Vesco and Rob Noth (18) in the early seventies.

(17) zero bump-steer design


(18) Rob Noth