That's quite possible Steve that he was not actually putting his decals on others bikes. I too still have a set of his decals in an envelope somewhere. I think what I should more correctly have said was that it seemed that because his bikes were so omnipresent the talk always was that he slapped decals on whatever bike he worked on. At the time is seemed that everybody was riding his bikes. Also, as Steven Maasland might have mentioned, because of Canadian import policies, bike builders could import parts at much cheaper prices than any retail store could so his bikes were real bargains. We went to his shop to buy just Campy parts because he could sell them much less expensively than local shops. Eddie Albert Chappaqua, NY
No offense, but I would have to get some solid collaboration before I believe that Marinoni put his decals on someone else's frame. I say this,because he had a variety of bogus decals specifically to dress up repaints.These were decals in the same style as his own, but with different names of fictitous manufacturers. That way, if someone wanted a repaint and decals
were not available, they could have a flashy Hoolio or Wazzis to ride. Actually, I don't recall the bogus names, but they really sounded like the names used on Italian bikes back then.
I can just imagine the fun of showing up at a ride with a shiny Bradorio and having the local Big Jerk boast about how he had one once but found it too mushy in a sprint. You know the type. In the early '80s, Marinoni had decal sets for most of the more popular Italian builders. I assumed that he knew these guys well enough that it wasn't a problem for him to obtain them. He let me have a set of Marinoni decals for my toolbox (they're still there) and we had extras in case a frame got scratched up on the floor. If that was common practice, it's possible that some riders slapped them on their repainted bikes after getting them back to the shop. They don't do decals any more at the Marinoni shop. They use software and a knife plotter to cut masks and spray the graphics before clearcoating. They stay on better, but are not as flashy as the decals were.
I did hear that story about the AMF bikes being Marinonis.
--Steve Barner, Bolton, Vermont
>> Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 13:28:07 -0400
\r?\n>> From: Edward Albert <ealbert@bellatlantic.net>
\r?\n>> To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
\r?\n>> Subject: [CR]Re: Marinoni
\r?\n>>
\r?\n>> I lived and raced in Toronto during the mid 1970's and for a time it
\r?\n>> seemed that just everybody was riding Marinoni's. Over the years I
\r?\n>> owned and raced on three cutom bikes of his each time making the trip
\r?\n>> to his workshop (next to his house) north of Montreal. The stories
\r?\n>> about him in the racing community were legion. For a time it seemed
\r?\n>> that every bike was a Marinoni because when people brought their bikes
\r?\n>> to him for repaints he put his own decals on them. So, Gios, Viner,
\r?\n>> Masi, etc....it didn't matter they all came out Marinoni. At first we
\r?\n>> all thought he was just bringing in generic Italian frames and painting
\r?\n>> them as his own because there were just so many of them, and they all
\r?\n>> looked different. At least that was the story that circulated in the
\r?\n>> Peloton. Also the rumor was that when AMF had a top North American team
\r?\n>> (Steve Bauer being their most prominent member) the AMF bikes they rode
\r?\n>> were all Marinoni's.
\r?\n>> The thing was that he was so reasonably priced that when you crashed
\r?\n>> out on one you just ordered another.
\r?\n>> Eddie Albert
\r?\n>> Chappaqua, NY