Vivian Lewis builds its first motorcycle and car in 1899/1900; South Australia leads on car registration, licences

Vivian Lewis Ltd built this 1910 Daimler nine-seater 38hp Landaulette in Adelaide on a British chassis.
Displayed at the National Motor Museum, Birdwood. Donor G. Brooks, 1991

Vivian Lewis produced the first petrol-driven motor car made in South Australia in 1900. He also built the first South Australian motorcycle in 1899.

Lewis’s business was boosted by the visit to Adelaide in 1898 by Frenchwoman Anthelmina Serpolette who was promoting a petrol-driven motor tricycle for the Gladiator Cycle Company.

Vivian Lewis’s workshop was called upon to fix Serpollete’s tricycle when it refused to go on the day before she was engaged to appear at the Ariel bicycle race meeting at the Jubilee Oval.

Originally an importer and maker of bicycles, The Lewis Cycle and Motor Works’ said the first car it built was “manufactured entirely at the Lewis works” but the local content in later cars under the “Lewis” brand isn’t known.

By 1907, the business was busy importing and manufacturing bicycles and manufacturing Lewis motorcycles. One in eight motorcycles on the road in South Australia in 1915 was a Lewis – and importing and retailing motor cars.

With World War I and the loss of its founders Tom O’Grady and Vivian Lewis, the Vivian Lewis company took a different direction towards being a car dealership in the 1920s.

Being flat, dry and relatively prosperous, with a limited rail network, South Australia took up the motor car quicker than other states. Australia’s first registration and licensing system was started in South Australia during 1906 and, by 1910, 1350 cars (and more motor cycles) were registered.