Updated on June 2, 2022
Tom Finnigan, a native of Malvern, a leafy inner-east suburb of Melbourne, Australia, launched the Malvern Star in 1903 at Glenferrie Road.
where are malvern star bikes made
Malvern Star is an Australian bicycle manufacturer headquartered in Melbourne. Founded in 1902, the firm has now become a household name in Australia.
Melbourne’s Malvern Star plant was once located in South Melbourne, across from Crown Casino, on Clarendon Street and Normanby Road, where the Melbourne Conference and Exhibition Centre has since been built.
A Malvern Star Cycle Shop was attached to the Malvern Star Factory. During the 1950s and into the late 1960s, Small engaged John (Jack) Lee as the manager of the South Melbourne store. To support Bruce Small’s suburban and country Malvern Star dealers, Lee established many Malvern Star cycle shops in the Sydney Road Coburg, Elizabeth Street Melbourne and Sydney Road Brunswick areas. Melbourne served as the location for the 1959 filming of Hollywood movie On the Beach. When the film’s producers asked John Lee to supply a number of bikes for a sequence set in Melbourne’s CBD, he obliged. That scene in the movie featured John Lee and his wife Lauris riding Malvern Star bicycles as extras, and they also appeared in a crowd scene at Melbourne’s State Library.
