I have a lower end one, same brakes, Williams crank and simplex Derailluurs.
Same stickers too, except I think it has a downtube sticker also, I don't recall for sure. When My father bought it slightly used in 1974, the story was that it had been marketed by Arctic Cat snowmoblies. Mine has the metallic brown they used about that time, and they were marketing some interesting stuff about then, like a child size snowmobile. The one on Ebay is much better built than mine, and I've only seen 2-3 over the last 4 years or so. Of those, one was red like this one, and the other was sort of a flourescent green. The other red one was also Campagnolo equipped, so that may have been the color for the better model. The lower end one rode fine, but that may just be because I was used to it. I rode it in a couple very entry level races, despite the 30lb weight. And eventually bought my Motobecane after crashing the arctic going to play baseball. I still don't trust the twisted/untwisted fork, since it re-twisted later that week. The simplex parts all failed during the week as well, sort of delayed crash damage.
Steve Birmingham Lowell,Ma
Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2004 19:43:45 EDT From: EdVintage63@aol.com To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org Subject: [CR]Arctic/Stella Message-ID: <1d8.25f434e3.2e21d931@aol.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Precedence: list Message: 5
What to make of this frame/bike? Skimmed over it upon first reading, but reading the description reveals that the bike is an "Artic" rather than a normal Stella.
Seems like a decent quality frame - Campy dropouts and some chrome. Can't really make out much of the contrasting headtube lugs. No frame decal, but downtube sticker appears to read "Custom Built by Stella." Did someone comission Stella to produce this frame? Would this have been an upper or med level bike? French bikes with Campy don't seem that common - did someone other than Stella specify the components? Anyone know more about the Stella/Arctic connection?
Ed Granger
curioser and curioser in:
Lancaster, PA, USA