Super Elliott carries the Adelaide cycle tradition of Vivian Lewis/John Bullock in 21st Century
Super Elliott gathered a talented technical and artisan team at the Gawler Place, Adelaide, bicycle factory.
Image courtesy aussievelos.net
Super Elliott bicycles brand has survived into the 21st Century, carrying the banner for Adelaide's strong tradition of cycle manufacturing started by Vivian Lewis in 1892 and taken up by John Bullock in the early 20th Century.
The Elliott brothers, Bert and Laurie, founded what later became Super Elliott, as a shop in Payneham in 1902 coinciding with Laurie winning the South Australian league’s 25-mile road race. Their bikes were price from £4 and the Elliott Special, with genuine BSA parts, was £16.
They also added motor cycles to their range. When the original partnership broke up, Victor Elliot joined the company that started a factory in an old livery stable in Gawler Place, Adelaide, in the 1920s. Later in that decade, that Bert Elliott decided to discard the petrol-driven side of the business and concentrate on bicycles.
Two years after opening a shop in Rundle Street, Adelaide, the business became a limited company: changing from Elliott Bros to Super Elliott.
In the early 1930s, Super Elliott sponsored its own popular and successful professional cycling team – Keith Thurgood, Deane Toseland, Phil Thomas, Jack Conyers – to showcase the brand.
With annual sales of its cycles soaring to the thousands, Bert Elliott made a trip to Britain with Bruce Small and negotiated with BSA Co. Birmingham to merge their wholesale departments as General Accessories (South Australia) Pty Ltd, with Laurie Elliott as manager.
Super Elliotts was blessed with the technical talents of frame builders such as Claude Bushell, Len Edwards and Tom Robinson, painters Percy Kutcher, and frame enamellers Rex Hunter, Les Hall and Ray Greenslade.
This personal attention to frame building almost ended in the 1960s but Super Elliott survived the flood of imports in in the 1970s/80s, even developing its own in-store brand Pursuit, built by Wayne Roberts.
The Elliot brothers' belief in bicycles was vindicated with their 21st Century revival.
