Group-- My favorite is the "Astra", which has seat tube decals similar to the Orly in question. It too was made by Motobecane, sold through Sears and auto parts stores, and had a Motobecane winged M cut clear through the fork crown to identify it's origin.. I have never seen this fork crown on a "real" Motobecane. Nelson Miller in SUNNY Seattle!
There should be scores of Orly bikes in garages all over Southern California. They were sold at Pep Boys, White Front, and other discount stores during the 1960;'s. There seemed to have been a hierarchy of French bikes during that time--Bertin, Lejeune at one or two stores, Gitane and Peugeot at every bike store, Motobecane coming in after 1970, and Orly, Starnord and the brand Rollfast in department stores. There were a lot of "closet classics" sold at non-bike stores in the early 1970's. Anybody with other brands out there? Oh, yeah, the Motobecane Le Champions that had Hawthorne decals and were sold at May Company! David Feldman
> Hi Everybody,
>
> I picked up kind of a neat old French ladies'
> bike today. It's a mixte called *ORLY* (made by
> Motobecane), with stainless steel fenders; it's a
> 10 speed. This is a LOT heavier bike than I'm
> used to with the Masis, Mondia & Torpado, so
> maybe it will be the beach cruiser. It is
> bilious green and rust colored. :-) The price
> was right though, so I'm gonna clean it up,
> repack any bearings I can gain access to and ride
> it. (Gee, after I've been deleting some of the
> cottered crank discussions this week, serves me
> right -- I now have some to deal with!) I
> thought I'd post a couple of *before* pictures if
> anybody would like to take a look:
>
> http://albums.photopoint.com/
>
> I'll post some *after* pictures later.
>
> Paulie Davis
> Rainy and COLD (finally!) in Los Angeles
>
>
>
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