"Okay, can someone give me a break-down on what was this "Continental" style which seems to have become popular not only with Carpenter but with a large number of the British builders in this time period? Any comments from the Brits on the list or those of you into Brit bikes of this period, about this frame!
Paul Williams, Ottawa, ON, Canada"
Well this all goes back to our earlier "rant" about nationality and bikes, does it not?
I believe (and Mick Butler is the expert here) Charles Holland's winning of a stage (or more) in the Tour de France in 1937 (?) set British cycling on a continental kick. For the first time British riders could compete with those foreigners on the other side of the Atlantic. And consequently, there was a huge and immediate demand for "continental" style cycles. I doubt there was any desire to actually BUY an Italian or French machine during this era or rather the means to do so given the devaluation of sterling and currency controls. But there was every good reason for British makers to capitalise on the euro mania.
Nothing is more British than a British interpretation of "continental" (like the lasagne and chips I had once in Edinburgh) but the hallmarks incorporated during the last few years of peace were striking: 1) more upright frame angles (72 parallel was widely offered as was the classic 71/73), 2) coloured finishes and "flare" transfers (previously you could have any colour you wanted as long as it was black and British TT regs prohibited showing brand names on frames so they tended to be all but invisible), 3) cut-away lugs, 4) chromed fork caps and fork ends and 5) deeper handlebar bends. British lightweights started to have front and rear brakes as well although I am not sure this is "continental".
The best mass market example of all this is the Charles Holland special version of the RRA offered c. 1939. Light "polychromatic" blue, special decals etc. etc. The angles were tightened on the RRAs around 1937 as well. Previous to then the angles on most English lightweights were amazingly lack.. 69 or so.
The result of all of this again has nothing to do with "continental" but everything to do with what some of us ranters revere most of all: the classic and unmatched British lightweights c. 1937-1957. They had very little in common with their true continental counterparts but like anything classic and wonderful were the result of gradual innovation and selective embracing of foreign practices. As long as they had celluloid mudguards, wingnuts, saddlebags and sleevegrips they, like your Carpenter, were still unbashedly BRITISH.
Peter Kohler Washington DC USA
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