BSA design repair PT. 1

I could drag this one out forever but I'm short on time. My father and I co-own Grumpy Unk's 1971 BSA Lighting 650. Unk hated the sidecovers and I agreed to help design some new ones that Dad would build. I think we're moving forward with that. I'm not a fan of the sidecovers myself and my favorite thing in the world to do (well, perhaps...third favorite) is design stuff. I'm not going to pretend I'm a better designer than say Fabio Taglioni or Leno Tonti but perhaps we can do better than Nigel Ramsbottom or whomever that came up with these three piece, steel and zinc die cast afterthoughts slapped on the side of the newly (at the time) redesigned A65 line.

The Bike in question. It's not that dark in person.

Okay, they're not that bad. I had one of these for a while and I've always liked the way they look bone stock. I do feel the looks could be improved a bit and in the spirit Hippocrates, I look first to do no harm. We won't do anything that can't be undone with some wrenches.

No idea where I got this one, no copyright infringement intended. 

Body by Fabio
No idea where I got this one, no copyright infringement intended.

Speaking of Fabio Taglioni. My guess is this is no chicken and egg deal here. The Brits needed cash to keep all of motorcycling alive in 1971. Down there in Italy they were building these beauties. I doubt the Italians were sending spies up to the land of blancmange to find out how to make a motorcycle look sexy. To play devil's advocate, I would think most folks would take the Ducati over the BSA any day of the week. Opinions vary but if you squint a little, the aesthetics are very similar. So what could we do to fix the slap-dash styling of the BSA? Hmmmm....we could steal those side covers. I'm speaking stylistically, of course. If I was a designer worth my salt I'd Photoshop those babies right on there. But that's not an option at the moment. Moving on. 

Holy crap that's cool.
No idea where I got this one, no copyright infringement intended. 

While we're squinting, if the PO of Unk's bike had just dumped a big-assed handful of metal flake in that baby blue paint, we'd have something like this. You know...sort of.