All Electric Garages of Harborne, Birmingham - Triumph Car Dealers 9

This is the ninth in an occasional series about Triumph car dealers in the UK.

All Electric Garages rear screen sticker

All Electric Garages round sticker

All Electric Garages are still trading and on their website this is what they say about themselves:

The All Electric Garage was the first garage in England to be equipped with electric petrol pumps in 1915 - hence the name!
Amazingly enough All Electric opened in 1968 at a site opposite in High Street Harborne, the country’s first self- service petrol station.  This became All Electrics second site.
The original garage was based in Greenfield Road Harborne and it was this garage site that John Leek purchased in 1967.  It was then an MG and Triumph dealership.  John’s background was a trainee mechanic with Evans and Kitchen in Birmingham, gaining engineering qualifications and hands on selling experience in establishing the following franchises with his first employer -  NSU, Skoda, BMW, Volga, Saab, all of these prior to 1967!  This gave John the appetite for multi franchising and All Electric in the 70’s and 80’s became the first business to operate multi-franchise sites in the Midlands.
All Electric grew organically through the 70’s 80’s and 90’s into a 14 garage operation selling Volvo’s, Mazda, Hyundai, Austin Rover, Morris, Skoda, Citroen, Peugeot, Suzuki, Chrysler Jeep, TVR and many others
Due to management shrewd property decisions the group has weathered many of the downturn fluctuations that have hit the economic structure of the country and particularly the motor trade.  At its peak All Electric employed nearly 300 people and the company has been steered to stable waters and still employs over 100 colleagues. Over the last couple of years we have moved away from the large show rooms and steered in the direction of the internet where we have found prices are most competitive.  In fact 75% of All Electrics used cars are sold over the internet, followed by a showroom visit.
The group sells and services thousands of new and used vehicles annually and in these turbulent times is proud to offer an oasis of stability for employees, management and customers.  Our customers like the fact that faces stay the same and year after year they can deal with people they know and trust.

The round sticker is on sale new but unfortunately I lost details of who from.

The All Electric Garage are listed in 1968/69 directory as a dealer in 270 High Street, Harborne, Birmingham, In 1974 listed as at ALL ELECTRIC GARAGE LTD.,
Greenfield Road. Harborne, Birmingham B17 OEB.
The business in Harborne was previously listed in 1965 as Harborne Motor Co., 270 High Street, Harborne.

All Electric Garages PLC rear screen sticker

All Electric Garages PLC are still selling cars.  My Friend Ray has this on his 2003 Chrysler PT Cruiser.

All Electric Garage used car advert 1992

Plea for information

If you have any more information or recollections about All Electric Garage or any other Birmingham area Standard Triumph dealer such as photos of window stickers, dealer badges or sill plates etc please let me know. I can be contacted via the comments to this post or on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/stephen.weblin

Further information and sources

Link to the other articles in this series.

Link to other posts about Birmingham area dealers 

 Link to my post about P J Evans Ltd

Link to post about Cranmore Bros Ltd 

Link to Spot Garage (Northfield) Limited

Link to facebook page: Triumph Car Dealers.

Link to my Triumph Car Dealers Flickr group which includes many photos of Standard Triumph garages etc from my collection and many other contributors .

I have a collection of Standard Triumph car dealer directories: http://vitessesteve.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/triumph-car-dealer-directories.html

Picture credits: Round sticker John on Flickr; All Electric Garages PLC rear screen sticker Ray;  All Electric Garage used car advert 1992 posted to facebook by Jonathan Catlow.