Mark Petry wrote: <As for the appearance of threadless stems on French bikes, Jim Cunningham's Alex Singer has what appears to be a threadless stem. It's on the Singer page in Classic Rendezvous -
http://www.classicrendezvous.com/
I'm not sure what year Jim's bike was produced; it is earlier than my Singer, which has a stem with conventional expander wedge, but the threadless steerer design certainly dates to the 50s if not before.>
I owned the Singer in question before Jim. I purchased it in about 1980 from its original owner, Jerry Collier. IIRC, he had it built sometime in the late 60's/early 1970's. It has a long threaded section and uses a standard lock nut on the top. So, it's not quite a "threadless" headset. An interesting note: since it's a large frame (65cm.), the steerer is actually longer than the fork blades!
Cheers, Mark Ritz in Arcata, CA, where there's a big storm a-brewin'