Jerry Moos begins a taxonomy of French bikes: - "mainstream" meaning well known in US (Peugeot, Gitane, Motobecane...) - smaller established production groups (Lejueune? Yvar? Follis?) - folks who did private label stuff for the US during the bike boom (St. Etienne,..) Of course, we'd all note the french specialty builders like Herse and Singer.
My own favorite private label is my wife's boom-era road bike. got it at a
bike shop bankruptcy sale in Shaker Hts, OH in the mid-70s. It had only
one decal: the superVitus tag. We call it "l'Orphelin" (which I am told
is the French for The Orphan) since it never had a real name. It is,
however, a sweet little bike -- particularly since I cleaned it up a bit
and Les Lunas did a fabulous 3-color fade in imron.
harvey sachs
mcLean VA
I wouldn't consider Lejeune as an oddball French bike. I own two, the 1973
racing model on the CR site, and a 70's era tandem with 650B tires. Lejeune
and Mercier both had strong teams in the Tour de France and other European
races throughout most of the 60's and 70's, featuring top riders (including
Lucien van Impe for Lejeune and Raymond Poulidor for Mercier). So I would
say that makes them pretty mainstream, at least in that era. Bertin and
Folis had smaller racing presence, but sold a lot of bikes, both in Europe
and America, in the 70's. Their were a lot of obscure French marques,
though, and Yvar seems to be one of them. I'd divide the obscure French
bikes into two groups. First there were the small but established
manufacturers who simply never had a high enough volume to become known
outside France, and whose products rarely showed up in America. Then there
were the bikes sold under names like "St. Tropez, "St. Etienne" and "Polar"
in the US during the bike boom. These names seem to have been made up by US
marketing guys and disappeared with the end of the bike boom. No telling
who actually made these.
Regards,
Jerry Moos
Houston, TX