 | |
| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | sporting goods |
| Founded | 1899 in Weston, Ontario |
| Headquarters | |
| Products | bicycles |
CCM is a Canadian bicycle brand owned by Canadian Tire. The brand was first used by the Canada Cycle & Motor Co. Ltd, founded in Weston, Ontario in 1899. CCM dominated the Canadian bike market for much of the 20th century before becoming bankrupt in 1983. The CCM trademark was then acquired by Procycle Group, while the company's hockey assets were sold off (CCM Hockey).
The formation of C.C.M. came at the same time as an American bicycle industry consolidation: the American Bicycle Company was formed by 42 manufacturers, and soon afterwards announced plans to open a branch plant in Canada called the National Cycle Company. [1]
C.C.M. was established upon the amalgamation of the operations of four major Canadian bicycle manufacturers: H.A. Lozier, Massey-Harris, Goold, and Welland Vale Manufacturing. [2] The company then accounted for 85% of Canadian cycle production.[ citation needed ]
Around 1899, many smaller bicycle makers went out of business, and C.C.M. soon became Canada's industry leader.
In 1903, weakness in the bicycle market prompted C.C.M. to acquire the assets of Canadian Motors Ltd. (CML), a failed automobile producer. Tommy Russell, C.C.M.'s new general manager, saw an opportunity to diversify his company's product line. [3]
In 1904, anticipating the growing market for motorcars, C.C.M. established the Russell Motor Car Company in Toronto.
In 1895, H.A. Lozier & Co. opened a bicycle manufacturing plant on St. Clair Avenue in the Town of Toronto Junction (as the town was then officially called). Massey-Harris and Gendron Bicycles also moved some bike manufacturing to the Junction in the HA Lozier factory. [4]
Montreal, Winnipeg, and Vancouver, were originally part of a diversified network of C.C.M. manufacturing processes. By 1917, C.C.M.'s bicycle manufacturing operations had moved into a larger factory on Lawrence Avenue West east of what is now called Weston Road in Weston, Ontario [5] where manufacturing continued until 1980.
From 1939 to 1945, during the Second World War, C.C.M.'s cycle's manufacturing facilities were taken over by the Canadian government and declared an essential war service. Two simple, one-speed bicycles were manufactured and then shipped in wooden packing crates to the Canadian army. [6] They produced motorcars, which have allegedly been used as light military vehicles. Due to a rubber shortage in 1942, the pedals of C.C.M. Rambler bicycles had wooden blocks. According to WWII veterans, the Rambler was popular with U.S. and British armed forces as well as Canadians. [7]
By the late 1970s, the company was experiencing yearly losses and had to rely on the government for loans to keep itself solvent. A change of ownership failed to improve matters and the company declared bankruptcy in January 1983. [8]
Today, the site of the former C.C.M. factory in Weston is the location of a Tim Hortons coffee shop The community continues to honour CCM with bicycle themed lampposts. [9]
Shortly after C.C.M. declared bankruptcy in 1983, all of the assets of the company were purchased by Procycle Group Inc. of Québec who retained the bicycle division and sold off the hockey division [10] to Montréal businessman David Zunenshine.
Procycle has acquired rights to a number of cycling brands for use on various lines of bicycles. At some point, Procycle renamed CCM to 'CCM Cycle' to better differentiate the brand from the separate CCM Hockey business.
In 1999, the CCM brand turned 100 years old. After a 101-year history, over 10,000,000 bikes had been manufactured in Canada bearing the CCM name. [6]
As of 2004, Procycle was the largest bicycle manufacturer in Canada, building 200,000 CCM-branded bikes per year across Canada and the USA. [6]
The CCM Cycle website remained online until February 2008, then displayed an under construction message until the end of May 2008 when it went offline.
In an Industry Canada company directory profile updated in February 2010, Procycle lists only two bicycle brands and divisions, Miele and Rocky Mountain, as reflected on the Procycle website. [11] Canadian Tire has since acquired the rights to the brand [12]
C.C.M. manufactured a wide variety of bicycles.
The C.C.M. Motor Bicycle was manufactured between 1910 and 1911. Only three are known to exist. [13] Double or twin bar bicycles were produced from around 1917 to 1962. [14] In 1922 the Company introduced the Joycycle, a new three-wheeler. [6]
Around 1932, C.C.M. introduced the Light Delivery Bicycle, a cargo bike with a stronger frame made of heavier gauge tubing and a basket. Previously, bicycles had been used as "commercial vehicles, either in a tricycle configuration or as modified touring tricycles." In the late 1940s, a "Pixie" bicycle motor was installed to assist with heavy loads and climbing hills. One Ottawa greengrocer was seen using one of these delivery bikes from the 1930s until the early 1960s. C.C.M. introduced the aviation-inspired Flyte, designed by Harvey W. Peace, [15] in 1936 and sold it until 1940. [16] The Flyte advertising poster described a frame of aeroplane seamless steel tubing, a C.C.M. Triplex Hanger crankset, a C.C.M. Hercules Coaster Brake, Dunlop "Fort" Tires and other high-grade equipment. [17]
Most CCM bikes were simple mass-market bicycles. According to an old CCM cycle website, the CCM Mustang Marauder was the popular children's wheelie bike similar to the Schwinn Sting-Ray or the Raleigh Chopper. The CCM Scamp was another children's model. During the 1970s, the company produced the popular and inexpensive CCM Targa road bike, as well as higher-end road bikes including the Silver Ghost and the Campagnolo-equipped (custom built) Tour du Canada. [18] City- and touring models included the Calico, Capri, Centennial, Concorde, Elan, Elite, Encore, Galaxie, Grand Sport, Imperial, Sunspot and Targa. The CCM Ranger resembled the CCM Rambler, but with 26" wheels.
A bicycle, also called a pedal cycle, bike, push-bike or cycle, is a human-powered or motor-powered assisted, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, having two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A bicycle rider is called a cyclist, or bicyclist.
Falcon Cycles is a British bicycle manufacturer which was based in Brigg, North Lincolnshire, owned by Tandem Group.
Trek Bicycle Corporation is a bicycle and cycling product manufacturer and distributor under brand names Trek, Electra Bicycle Company, Bontrager, and Diamant Bikes. The company has previously manufactured bikes under the Gary Fisher, LeMond Racing Cycles, Klein, and Villiger Bikes brand names. With its headquarters in Waterloo, Wisconsin, Trek bicycles are marketed through 1,700 independently owned bicycle shops across North America, subsidiaries in Europe, Asia, South Africa, as well as distributors in 90 countries worldwide. Most Trek bicycles are manufactured outside the United States, in countries including the Netherlands, Germany, Taiwan, and China.
Bridgestone Corporation is a Japanese multinational tire manufacturer founded in 1931 by Shojiro Ishibashi (1889–1976) in the city of Kurume, Fukuoka, Japan. The name Bridgestone comes from a calque translation and transposition of ishibashi (石橋), meaning 'stone bridge' in Japanese.
CCM Hockey is a Canadian manufacturer of ice hockey equipment. CCM was formerly an initialism for Canada Cycle & Motor Co. Ltd., a bicycle manufacturer that began producing hockey equipment as a secondary business. The original company went bankrupt in 1983, though both product lines were continued under new, separate ownership.
Vehicles that have two wheels and require balancing by the rider date back to the early 19th century. The first means of transport making use of two wheels arranged consecutively, and thus the archetype of the bicycle, was the German draisine dating back to 1817. The term bicycle was coined in France in the 1860s, and the descriptive title "penny farthing", used to describe an "ordinary bicycle", is a 19th-century term.
A motorized bicycle is a bicycle with an attached motor or engine and transmission used either to power the vehicle unassisted, or to assist with pedalling. Since it sometimes retains both pedals and a discrete connected drive for rider-powered propulsion, the motorized bicycle is in technical terms a true bicycle, albeit a power-assisted one. Typically they are incapable of speeds above 52 km/h (32 mph).
Thomas Buckland Jeffery was a British emigrant to the United states who co-founded the Gormully & Jeffery company which made the Rambler bicycle. He invented the "clincher" rim which was widely used to fit tires to bicycles and early automobiles, and in 1900 established the Thomas B. Jeffery Company to make automobiles, again using Rambler branding.
Sterling Bicycle Co. was a 19th-century American bicycle company first based in Chicago, Illinois before relocating to Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Gormully & Jeffery(G&J) was an American bicycle company, founded in Chicago in 1879 by Thomas B. Jeffery and R. Philip Gormully.
This timeline of motorized bicycle history is a summary of the major events in the development and use of motorized bicycles and tricycles, which are defined as pedal cycles with motor assistance but which can be powered by pedals alone.
Pope Manufacturing Company was founded by Albert Augustus Pope around 1876 in Boston, Massachusetts, US and incorporated in Hartford, Connecticut in 1877. Manufacturing of bicycles began in 1878 in Hartford at the Weed Sewing Machine Company factory. Pope manufactured bicycles, motorcycles, and automobiles. From 1905 to 1913, Pope gradually consolidated manufacturing to the Westfield Mass plant. The main offices remained in Hartford. It ceased automobile production in 1915 and ceased motorcycle production in 1918. The company subsequently underwent a variety of changes in form, name and product lines through the intervening years. To this day, bicycles continue to be sold under the Columbia brand.
American Bicycle Company (1899-1903) was an American bicycle company (Trust) led by Albert Augustus Pope. The company was formed to consolidate the manufacturers of bicycles and bicycle parts. In the 1890s the advancements in bicycle design led to unprecedented demand for the new Safety bicycles. The "American Bicycle Company" trust only lasted for three years.
The Raleigh Bicycle Company is a British bicycle manufacturer based in Nottingham, England and founded by Woodhead and Angois in 1885. Using Raleigh as their brand name, it is one of the oldest bicycle companies in the world. After being acquired by Frank Bowden in December 1888, it became The Raleigh Cycle Company, which was registered as a limited liability company in January 1889. By 1913, it was the largest bicycle manufacturing company in the world. From 1921 to 1935, Raleigh also produced motorcycles and three-wheel cars, leading to the formation of Reliant Motors. Raleigh bicycle is now a division of the Dutch corporation Accell.
Triumph Cycle Co. Ltd., based in Nottingham, England, was a bicycle manufacturing company.
Rocky Mountain is a Canadian bicycle manufacturer based in Saint-Georges, Quebec. Its name is a reference to the mountain range that stretches from eastern British Columbia to the southwest United States.
Cycles Peugeot, founded in 1882, is a manufacturer of bicycles based in Sochaux, France and currently a part of Cycleurope, a subsidiary of Sweden-based firm Grimaldi Industri.
BSA motorcycles were made by the Birmingham Small Arms Company Limited (BSA), which was a major British industrial combine, a group of businesses manufacturing military and sporting firearms; bicycles; motorcycles; cars; buses and bodies; steel; iron castings; hand, power, and machine tools; coal cleaning and handling plants; sintered metals; and hard chrome process.
McKenty, John A. (June 10, 2011). Canada Cycle and Motor: The CCM Story. Epic Press. ISBN 978-1-55452-670-3.
