Bob Jackson Audax Club

Popular classic from a Leeds brand that was big in America

Bob Jackson wasn’t related to Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and Michael but for a while America went just as wild for his British-made steel bikes as it did for his singing namesakes’ bubblegum soul.

Steve Mcqueen and President Jimmy Carter, probably the two most famous Americans of the era, were Bob Jackson owners.

Jackson, who opened his shop in Leeds in 1935, made good frames but he also happened to be in the right place at the right time. When Reynolds went to the US bike shows with their lightweight 753 tubing, which launched in 1976, they took

Bob with them. Americans, who up until then had been riding roadsters and beach cruisers, were blown away.

Jackson went back to Leeds with 18 months’ worth of orders.

By the beginning of the 1990s the big brands – as well as the Far East – had caught up, and Jackson brought in Donald Thomas to rescue the company. Thomas continued to run the company after Jackson died in 1999 and in the 2010s the company was still making 400 new frames a year with many more resprays, modifications and alterations.

However, Bob Jackson closed at the end of 2020 and was bought by fellow Leeds brand Woodrup, which will be producing three Jackson models including an updated model of this Audax Club that we photographed at Golden Age Cycles.

This bike is made from Reynolds 631 tubing, which in Reynolds’s words is “tough, durable, comfortable and suitable for long-distance riding”.

Woodrup will make the new Bob Jackson Audax/end-to-end with superior Reynolds 725 or 853 as an upgrade and, as with this bike, the rest of the build is up to the customer.

We may not see the same level of Jacksonmania again, but happily we’ll be seeing classic Bob Jackson bikes made in Leeds for years to come.