> To protect the guilty? Preserve the rep of the quality
> nameplates? They knew they were sending less than their
> best effort and didn't want a bunch of gaspipe bikes > >
running(or sitting) around with "good" names on them.
Also, there were a number of cases where the importer used a name of its own choosing to create its own brand - Mel Pinto for example, who's own bikes looked suspiciously like mid-level LeJeunes. In fact, someone like LeJeune probably did not even make its own frames, even if the painting was done in-house. Many bikes may have been shipped here by pseudo-manufacturers who were merely assemblers of frames made by larger concerns. Fred
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