I'm working on a friend's 1971 Triumph 500 Daytona. Replacing clutch, clutch hub ect. I'm looking at the engineering of these parts and mentally comparing with Japanese offerings of the same era. Sure the Brits had rested on their laurels and had technology stagnation due to having the market fairly cornered. The technology was essentially approaching half a century old.
I can understand their problems with anyone thinking of starting on new clean sheet designs, they were victims of their own success. A problem shared with Harley Davidson.
Japan went through a long period of copying existing designs but suddenly developed their own engineering style. What happened to cause this revolution which likely occurred in the early 60's? Is there other industries where the dominant players were so quickly left in the dust by new entities? Who drove the Japanese industrial revolution of this time period?
We are lucky they were about a decade behind on this or we may have lost WWII.
A peripheral question: What was the first mass produced motorcycle with a gear drive primary? This to me is a major technological development that improved motorcycles, a serious commitment to unit engines and transmissions using a common sump. British and American makers were amazingly slow at unitizing. Separate transmission is in hindsight quite a disadvantage vs unit.
I can understand their problems with anyone thinking of starting on new clean sheet designs, they were victims of their own success. A problem shared with Harley Davidson.
Japan went through a long period of copying existing designs but suddenly developed their own engineering style. What happened to cause this revolution which likely occurred in the early 60's? Is there other industries where the dominant players were so quickly left in the dust by new entities? Who drove the Japanese industrial revolution of this time period?
We are lucky they were about a decade behind on this or we may have lost WWII.
A peripheral question: What was the first mass produced motorcycle with a gear drive primary? This to me is a major technological development that improved motorcycles, a serious commitment to unit engines and transmissions using a common sump. British and American makers were amazingly slow at unitizing. Separate transmission is in hindsight quite a disadvantage vs unit.