Original Message: ----------------- From: Matteo Brandi bees.bfg@tin.it Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 10:41:03 +0200 To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org Subject: [CR]celluloid mudguards
Peter Kohler wrote: <And finally, Italian bikes don't have celluloid mudguards>
Wrong! Saw last week a late 20s early 30s Umberto Dei road bike with original celluloid mudguards.
Ciao
Matteo Brandi Firenze Italia
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Caro Matteo
e vero? bravissima!. vi ringrazio.
What is the Italian word for "mudguard" anyway?? I need to bone up my Italian cycling vocabulary. Technical Italian to English and v.v. is not easy... there was nothing more amusing that reading the "English" version of the Alfa Romeo instruction books in the 1950s and 60s.
Since you are the CR Italian expert, did Italian riders or firms ever make use of non Italian components, specifically British made ones?? We all know the British were simply mad for anything that was or even sounded Italian when it came to cycling in the 1950s-60s. If the name of the component sounded Italiano, you knew it was probably made in Birmingham.
If nationalism in cycles is a non-event nowadays and no-no on the CR List, it sure seems to have thrived... in Italia. Obviously in the 1930s patriotic Italians shunned anything British during and after the sanctions but I wonder if they even had to "make do" with anything sticking to all domestic production. I suspect a lot had to do with tariffs etc. and Italy was very protective of their own industries.
Peter Kohler Washington DC Stati Uniti
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