Vivian Lewis's cycle business in Adelaide city designs first South Australian-built petrol motor car in 1900
The first petrol-powered motor car built in South Australia came out of Lewis Cycle and Motor Works in McHenry Street, Adelaide in 1900.
Images courtesy Leon Mitchell and Engineers Australia South Australia division
Lewis Cycle and Motor Works, with Adelaide horse carriage and tram builders Duncan & Fraser, produced the first petrol-driven motor car made in South Australia – at McHenry Street, Adelaide city, in 1900. The company, founded by Vivian Lewis and Tom O’Grady and initially renowned for its bicycles and building the first South Australian motorcycle in 1899, gained valuable publicity from the small two-horse-power vehicle it made in 1900.
The Lewis display at the 1901 Royal Agricultural Society autumn show brought more publicity by featuring two motor vehicles with the Register newspaper reporting that “the whole of the designing, construction, and finishing of these machines being executed at the works". By the spring show, the Lewis car had a more practical water-cooled five horsepower motor.
With its larger motor, the car travelled to country shows and holiday destinations in 1902. A Lewis car was used to convey progress reports of a coronial investigation into a murder at Towitta, 21 miles beyond telegraph station at Angaston in South Australia's Barpssa Valley.
The Lewis design was settled in spring 1903 on the Minerva motor beneath a diamond frame design. Although Lewis built some more motor cars, importing was favoured over manufacturing. The first car imported by Lewis was for Gordon Ayres, assembled in the McHenry Street factory. A Gladiator for Bertie Barr Smith was “the first four cylindered car imported into Australia”. Lewis started importing more quality brands like De Dion, Talbot, Napier and Star and the Lewis Motor House was built on Victoria Square in 1904 with a factory on Molton Street, Adelaide.
Vivian Lewis had set up his bicycle importing and manufacturing business in Adelaide in 1893. Trading first as the Ormonde Bicycle Depot in Gawler Place, and later as the Lewis Cycle Works, the business became well known in Adelaide and country South Australia. Lewis’s business was boosted by the visit to Adelaide in 1898 by Frenchwoman Anthelmina Serpolette, promoting a petrol-driven Comiot motor tricycle,
By 1907, the business was busy importing and making bicycles and motorcycles. One in eight motorcycles on South Australia roads in 1915 was a Lewis. After Vivian Lewis and Tom O’Grady withdrew from the business and died during the World War I years, the company became a car dealership in the 1920s when it was taken over by Mann’s Motors (owned by Fred Mann, formerly of Duncan & Fraser) who held the South Australian agency for Chevrolet cars.
