After a career defined by results and relationships, Jeff Leisk is back at the beginning again, setting up to become the official Australian BSA importer
Decades in the KTM Group, from an ambassador role all the way through to a very successful General Manager, has put former motocross great Jeff Leisk in good stead for what’s essentially his third chapter in the two-wheel space. The difference this time, however, is the starting line. Because as the newly appointed importer and distributor of BSA, there is no inherited infrastructure, no established shipping or transporting logistics to refer to and no legacy dealer agreements to lean on.
“We’re starting from zero completely,” he says. “It’s a lot to do in a short space of time.”
Leisk is also one of the few Australians who has achieved impressive results in both directions of motorcycling’s ecosystem. A serial winner, he’s a multiple Australian MX champ, he finished second in the 1989 World Motocross Championship and even tried his hand in Aussie sprintcars.
In the decades since, he became the long-term public face and steady hand of KTM’s Australian operation. Taking on the role of managing director (and shareholder) of KTM’s Australian and New Zealand importer, AHG, in 2000, over the next two decades he helped lift annual volume from 400 units to 15,000 by 2020, alongside a 120-strong dealer network and $150 million in yearly revenue.
Now he’s applying those lessons to a brand that, while on paper needs no introduction, is still one that needs to be built from the ground up from Leisk’s native base in Perth.
While the move is very much the next logical step for a bloke not ready to consider retirement, Leisk says the BSA opportunity essentially found him “in the middle of last year”, while he was consulting for the pioneering electric off-road motorcycle company Stark Future.
What followed was part professional curiosity, part personal connection. “They were looking for an importer, and they were struggling to find somebody,” he recalls. “And I guess the more I looked into it, I got kind of interested, and I suppose one of the things that resonated a bit as well was when I was a young fellow, Dad would always talk about some of his first bikes being BSAs; the Gold Stars, the Bantams and things like that. So yeah, I just got excited by the opportunity and decided to pursue it.”
The distribution contract was signed and Leisk Moto Imports was registered as a private company towards the end of last year.
If BSA needs a modern reference for what success can look like in this corner of the market, it doesn’t need to look far. Urban Moto Imports (UMI) has spent the past decade turning affordable, classic-styled single- and twin-cylinder Royal Enfields into a serious business Down Under, proving there’s a large audience for bikes that feel approachable and characterful without climbing into premium pricing territory.
“Royal Enfield will be one of our major competitors, I suppose, because we certainly live in their space in terms of the product offering, the origin of the product, where it’s manufactured and also our price points,” Leisk says. “One thing we’ve seen (change) post-Covid is the price of bikes.”
His view is that brands in this bracket can still win on value, arguing that “the likes of Royal Enfield, BSA are still delivering, I think, a really good product at a very affordable price. So there’s a place for it in the market”.
Since UMI took on Royal Enfield distribution in Australia in 2015, it has helped grow the brand into a 62-dealership network across A-NZ. Over the same period, Royal Enfield’s momentum has kept climbing, surpassing one million global sales for the financial year ending 31 March, 2025, with Australia’s Asia-Pacific region up 13 per cent year-on-year. Across the Tasman, BSA is already being sold under a different importer, with Europe Imports named as the official New Zealand distributor when the brand announced its return there in 2024.
“I’ve had a little bit of a chat to those guys and I think they’re getting along pretty well with it,” Leisk says, pointing to a recent global owners event in Wellington that helped generate interest.
These days, the BSA brand sits under the Classic Legends umbrella, the Mahindra-backed group that also holds Jawa and Yezdi, with Mahindra retaining 60 per cent ownership. That backing helps take some of the guesswork out of the exercise compared with trying to introduce an unknown marque from scratch.
“Turnover is $US60 billion a year, they’re a huge conglomerate, so it’s nice to know it’s got a solid background,” he says of Mahindra. “Classic Legends’ main mantra is to revitalise older brands and bring them back to life.”
He’s careful to frame that point in practical terms: “You know, it’s not that the idea of importing a brand had never crossed my mind before. But a lot of the time, you know, some of the newer brands, emerging ones … in the early days, it’s very difficult to establish a brand and a reputation, and you need a lot of things to kind of go in the right direction.”
With KTM, a much-loved brand whose motto is Ready to Race, Leisk has spent much of his working life selling high performance and cutting-edge technology. And while a BSA 350 Bantam couldn’t be farther from a 1390 Super Duke, there’s actually one important element of BSA that KTM is still forging: a 165-year history.
“I’ve lived most of my life trying to sell the latest and greatest with KTM or with Stark being a new technology,” he says. “And then with BSA, one thing that really has caught me off guard in a positive way is how big the following is for the brand, and how many people still own the older-vintage BSAs.
“And then there’s multiple associations and owners clubs around the country, and I’ve been able to connect with a couple of them already. And that’s been really cool. It’s made it a lot of fun.”
The rollout plan is for the initial 25 dealers to be appointed in major centres across Australia, with early indications suggesting deliveries could start as early as the middle of this year. Despite his association with Stark Futures, Leisk says a direct-to-customer model was “never a consideration”, revealing that Stark ran both models and the vast majority of riders wanted to buy from a bricks-and-mortar dealership.
“I think it’s still the type of purchase where there’s a lot of complexities, because to sell a road registrable vehicle, Australia’s just not ready for that,” he says. And while his WA base has the potential to increase complexities and costs around transport and logistics, an eastern seaboard base is so far off the cards.
“We operated KTM from WA for quite a period of time. And we’re able to do it successfully, so I don’t really have any concerns about about that,” he says. “We’re pretty mobile; we’ll certainly make sure we get around and we’re at all the major events, etc.”
And in a rather refreshing approach in a world that’s rapidly becoming less about human connections, his clear mission is to simply deliver the best customer service in the industry, believing that successful partnerships are built on trust and communication.
Leisk Moto Imports is deliberately lean, built as a family operation from Perth with Jeff’s wife Liana and two of their daughters forming the structure. His wife will handle admin, he’ll take care of dealer relations and sales, while two of his daughters will handle parts and accessories. Marketing and digital support will be handled on a contract basis, at least initially.
“Very small to start with and we’ll grow when we need to grow with it,” he says. And while he wouldn’t be drawn on revealing any early sales targets, he did confirm that all three BSAs currently available globally – the Gold Star 650, the Scrambler 650 and the Bantam 350 – will all be made available to Australian customers. Beyond the initial trio, BSA has already hinted at what could come next, showing the Thunderbolt adventure prototype at EICMA 2025 in Milan.
“We obviously have a lot of pressure to perform, to deliver a seamless experience with good parts backup and good warranty support which we have to provide to our dealers so they can pass it on to the customers,” he says. “We want to deliver that type of service to our dealers and hopefully that sort of culture flows from them to the customers (to create) a really engaged community.”
He’s already sampled the bikes overseas, with a ride in the UK giving him an early sense of the character and experience offered by a modern BSA.
“I think they delivered on what they’re supposed to be,” he says. Asked what stood out, he points straight to the Gold Star. “I think the power of the Gold Star is really nice and smooth and it’s just a fun bike to ride,” adding that the Bantam 350 is selling super well in the UK.
Before the first Australian allocation is even on the water, Leisk says he wants to be closer to the source. “We plan to get along to the factory when our bikes are being produced, obviously just make sure we’re happy with how that goes, learn what we can and also understand the technical aspects of the products – we’re trying to immerse as much as we can in the product before it gets here.”
He’s also conscious that a heritage badge can be undone quickly if the rollout becomes a flood. “We’re pretty conscious of not flooding the market,” he says. “There are manufacturers getting their fingers burnt in that area.”
It’s an idea he’ll keep coming back to as he builds the network and sets expectations for supply: “As Enzo Ferrari said: You just need to make enough, less one!”
Leisk’s MX CV
- 1981 – 125cc Australian Motocross Champion
- 1982 – 500cc Australian Motocross Champion
- 1984 – Mr Motocross Champion
- 1984 – 250cc Australian Motocross Champion
- 1985 – Mr Motocross Champion
- 1987 – 5th place AMA Supercross Championship
- 1987 – 6th place AMA 125cc Motocross Championship
- 1988 – 6th place AMA Supercross Championship
- 1988 – 6th place AMA 250cc Motocross Championship
- 1988 – 4th place AMA 500cc Motocross Championship
- 1988 – 125, 250, 500cc Australian Motocross Champion
- 1989 – 2nd 500cc World Motocross Championship
The BSA line-up
Gold Star 650
BSA’s flagship retro roadster, built around a LAMS-approved 652cc liquid-cooled DOHC twin-spark single, producing 33.5kW (45hp) at 6500rpm and 55Nm at 4000rpm. A five-speed gearbox feeds a chassis with a 41mm front fork and twin rear shocks with five-step preload adjustment. Brembo calipers clamp a 320mm front disc and 255mm rear, both with ABS. Seat height is 780mm with a listed 213kg wet weight, plus wire-spoke alloy rims on Pirelli Phantom Sportscomp tyres and a 12L tank.
Scrambler 650
Based on the same engine and chassis platform, the Scrambler 650 blends classic heritage with a versatile design brief. It swaps the Gold Star’s 18-inch front wheel with a 19-inch, with both bikes running a 17-inch rear. Seat height increases to 820mm, wet weight is 5kg heaver at a claimed 218kg, while the wire-spoked alloy rims are shod with the popular Pirelli Scorpion Rally STR tyres.
Bantam 350
Reviving the spirit of the original and hugely-popular Bantam D1, the Bantam 350 is BSA’s most accessible, uncomplicated entry point. Power comes from a 334cc liquid-cooled DOHC single making 22kW (29hp) at 7750rpm and 29.62Nm at 6000rpm, driving through a six-speed gearbox. It rolls on cast wheels (18in front, 17in rear) lists at 185kg wet, a 13L tank and has a conventional non-adjustable front fork and twin rear shocks with five-step adjustment.
