Australian-made motorcycles in the 1950s - help please

[cardan]

C'mon. Give us a photo and the engine and frame numbers! It's MS fever...

[john.k]

Its a pedal cycle ....."You'd be better on a Malvern Star".

[cardan]

You could add a Berini "Motor Egg"!!! Little engines like the Berini, Cyclemaster, etc. at 50cc or less spelled the demise of the 98cc Villiers units.

Leon

[cardan]

Does anyone know where the frame number is stamped on a Malvern Star Auto-byke? Museum Victoria has had a look on their 1951 model, but can't see it anywhere.

Thanks

Leon

[cardan]

Found it - on the frame adjacent to the seat post - and it has a "52M" frame prefix. So the Museums Victoria Malvern Star Auto-byke is a product of the magnificent South Melbourne factory in 1952, likely the last year of production.

https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/items/374641

Leon

[R]

So in the light of this, are they going to amend that "circa 1948"  ??

Do we have an address for that Sth Melbourne factory.
Looks quite substantial ...

[R]

" the new £20,000 modern factory to be erected at Clarendon Street, South Melbourne, "
circa 1937 it would seem

Plenty of press announcements, but few actual details ...

"on the corner of Clarendon Street and Normanby Road in South Melbourne"

[33d6]

I've now transcribed about 2/3rds of the MS cards and now havve a fairly good idea of their activities.
Basically they only ever made three models and for engines used only the JDL (Junior de Luxe) or the 2 speed 1F (no pedals, kick start).
The JDL can be divided into twp eras, initial manufacture, 1940-46, engine prefix XX or XXA, post war engine prefix 586 or S 586, 1946-49. After them is the 1F 2 speeder minus pedals, engine prefix 716 or 716A. 716 was a generic Villiers prefix dating from 1949 to 51 and 716A emerges in 1952. 716 prefix engines can be found in BAC, Bond,Bown, Sun and others. It appears to be the generic number Villiers used for batches of engines for 'B' League manufacturers.
So far I've found only one factory made sngle speed 2F powered MS. As Australia didn't have the pushbike pedal start legal requirement for autocycles I think MS considered a 2 speed kick start autocycle was a better seller than the pedalling off arrangement.
Frame numbers are scrappy Unlike the car cards the motorcycle section cards are handwritten. Some cards had a space for the engine enumber, some didn't. There was no requirement for the clerk to record the frame number so many didn't. Nevetheless there are enough frame numbers recorded to make some reasonable assumptions. To date it appears the autocycle numbers were lumped in with the regular bicycle frame production. The individual frame number appears to bear no relation to reality. The only part of value to us is the identifying prefix. It appears MS used a single digit plus an M in the 1940's so 8M means 1948, 9M 1949 and so on. 1950 was still a single figure 0 but then they started to add the 5 for the decade so 51M and so on. I will give highest and lowest numbers when I've finished.
Any question?
PS, The Malvern Star factory no longer exists, the Melbourne Exhibition and Conference Centre, known to all Melburnians as Jeffs Shed now covers the site.

[R]

PS, The Malvern Star factory no longer exists, the Melbourne Exhibition and Conference Centre, known to all Melburnians as Jeffs Shed now covers the site.

Yes I just got there.

"The Malvern Star factory was located on the corner of Clarendon Street and Normanby Road in South Melbourne
which is now the site of the Melbourne Conference and Exhibition Centre just opposite Crown Casino.
Attached to the Malvern Star Factory was a Malvern Star Cycle Shop.
It had its own wharfage"

Thats a heck of a site !
Real Estate gold !
Do we know when it came down ?

[33d6]

Yes, it was a pig of an intersection. No traffic lights plus trams and lots of heavy haulage coming up from Fishermen’s Bend. As a country lad come to the big city to do part of his apprenticeship I was well out of my league negotiating that one.
I well remember watching one of those Singer 9 tourers of the day slowly being squashed by a big semi driving over it at that intersection. The semi driver didn’t even know it was under him as he flattened it like a bug.
I remember the Singer 9 quite well but for the life of me can’t remember what I was riding.

[cardan]

Are we in danger of knowing everything there is to know about Malvern Star autocycles? I feel very bad because although I have been in their presence, I don't think I've ever touched one or even examined one closely. I promise to pay attention next time I see one.

Re the factory: This is my favourite view to put it in position, a stone's throw from where the Polly Woodside is/was moored. https://citycollection.melbourne.vic.gov.au/35a-91a-image-showing-heavy-traffic-on-spencer-street-bridge-south-melbourne/ We're looking south down Spencer St looking over the Yarra River. The Bruce Small factory is the white building directly under the ASTOR neon sign. Judging by the prevalence of FB/EK Holdens, we're in the early 1960s.

This entire view is totally obliterated today. The was an historical survey in 1982: see Graeme Butler's fab photos and historical records on Flickr, including shots like this of the Bruce Small factory as it stood in 1982  https://www.flickr.com/photos/7849945@N02/15686586477/in/album-72157647618217269/ . I reckon around 1982-83 I rode my 1930 BSA Sloper to a VMCCV event at the Polly Woodside https://www.nationaltrust.org.au/places/polly-woodside/ , but no-one drew my attention to the home of the MS autocycle so close by.

33d6: brilliant stuff! I'm interested to know lots of things, but initially how does the evolution of the MS feel around 1940-41-42. From what I have, I'd guess only a handful of "prototypes" in late 1940, and perhaps only a few machines built during 1941 because Bruce Small told shareholders at the annual meeting in December 1941 that the company "was about to begin the production of motorised bicycles". You don't tell shareholders that if you've been making them all year? They had "about 500" Villiers JDL motors on hand at this time, so no doubt a lot of planning had gone into upcoming production.

Of course total numbers registered in Victoria will be of great interest.

Cheers

Leon

[R]

Interesting stuff.

There are some views "inside the factory".
Scanned very small, it must be said. (unless someone can find any bigger views ?)
Couple of moped views later on - not their manufacture though.
https://find.slv.vic.gov.au/discovery/search?query=any,contains,malvern%20star&tab=searchProfile&search_scope=slv_local&vid=61SLV_INST:SLV&offset=0

I see  the announcement (that bicycles) used BSA components.


Trove sez there was also a MS factory in Perth ?

[33d6]

It’s frustrating Leon but many of the XXA prefix JDL’s are at the at the end of the MS cards trays so I won’t have a full picture until I’ve transcribed all of them. The cards are filed purely by engine number disregarding all prefixes. As Villiers appear to number each engine type separately a new production 1F that has a lower engine number than the last of the XXA is thus filed in front of of the earlier engine.
On top of this it seems Villiers juggled production between customers. In essence if three firms each ordered 500 engines Villiers would “drip feed” each firm enough engines to keep production going rather completely fill one order thus leaving the other two high and dry meanwhile. Villiers tried hard not to give any customer preference (or not be seen  to anyway).
The upshot of all this is that I have small batches of consecutive numbers of each variation with no rhyme nor reason to it. I can’t give definitive answers until all are transcribed.

[R]

We really appreciate your voluntary efforts on this !
Its indeed a labour of love, but gives a rare view of otherwise unobtainable detail.
Our hearty thanks....

The pic(s) that Leon found of the factory just above also needs to get a mention.
That was near unfindable in the search results ...

No bloomin picture !
http://vhd.heritage.vic.gov.au/search/nattrust_result_detail/64566

[cardan]

Couple of moped views later on - not their manufacture though...
Trove sez there was also a MS factory in Perth ?

The "moped views" show the machine/machines that I call the "prototype". I've posted a photo previously - the second bike down in http://classicmotorcycleforum.com/index.php?topic=6172.msg30186#msg30186 . The machine is branded Malvern Star, and I know it is early because I have a very bad newspaper photo from January 1941 with the same bike - with the funny low tank with a "tabletop" - pacing cyclists in Tasmania, described as a Malvern Star. Not sure why the library is so protective of these images, as in Australia there is no copyright on photos taken before 1955.

On reading about MS frame numbers, I went through 36 pages of discussion on one of the bicycling threads - the link is in the thread referenced above. There were MS pushbikes built in (at least) Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide, with the appropriate letter code on the frame number M, S, B, P and A. Pretty sure all auto-cycles were made in Melbourne.

Leon