This quote in from post No.544, 04-24-22, 02:51 PM #
544 2Rick
Originally Posted by
H2Rick
Well, instead of a bunch of Miyata pics, I have a bunch of MERCURY pics in my gallery. This appears/appears to be some kind of department store bike maybe sold by Murray but made in Japan. Serial # is SE315059 as you can (hopefully) see in the pics. One unusual (to me) item is the headstock hardware which is stamped "SEIKI CO LTD TANGE JAPAN" if you can't make it out in the pic. I was hoping I'd find a Seiki bike manufacturer in T-Mar's list but no such luck. This bike is in such nice condition and was found by my buddy at a thrift store in a small nearby town. Someone wrecked a perfectly good bike by robbing the front wheel and the bar/stem assembly. This bike is just too nice to send to the landfill so I'm going to resurrect the old girl and get her back on the road. Yes, I know it's not collectible but it's too nice to scrap. I already have a good front wheel in hand and it's an Araya steel one to match the rear that was left on the bike. I also acquired a Nitto aluminum stem so all I need is a nice set of drop bars and I'll strip everything down and clean/regrease everything and then sell it locally. It has a complete Sun Tour equipment group on it along with a Sugino 170mm crank set and DiaCompe side pull calipers so there is some pretty nice bits on it.
It seems that there was a Mercury brand bike before WWII and Wikipedia says that the Mercury brand was owned by Murray so I guess this might be a Murray under all that nice glossy black paint. By the looks of it, it's probably an 80's bike.
Does anyone have any idea who built this lovely old bike ??
ADD ON: Well, after poking around on here today, I see a post by T-Mar in a Nishiki thread about a stamping on a BB that denotes Western Cycle. Strangely enough, or maybe not, that Western Cycle stamping looks suspiciously like the "M" emblem on the headstock of my Mercury. Check the pic and tell me what YOU think.
Mercury was the house brand name for products sold by Woodward's Stores Ltd. The first retail outlet was in Vancouver, BC and they established stores in British Columbia and Alberta in western Canada.
Woodward's sourced bicycles from several companies over the years. I have a 1956 Mercury from Hercules of Birmingham, UK.
In the 1970s and early 1980s Woodward's main source was CCM in Weston, Ontario. The CCM Weston plant closed in 1982 and Woodward's sourced some bicycles from Japan and Taiwan. Later their main bicycle source was Groupe Procycle in Quebec.
Your Mercury Corsair is from the period after CCM went bankrupt.
Woodward's filed for bankruptcy in December 1992. It was a very nice department store while in existence. I know several people who worked at a Woodward's store.