I think Mike's estimate is on the low side - Ernest Csuka says that about 200-300 Singers came over here. "But they were all racing frames," he added. (To him, a sport-touring frame without integrated racks and fenders is a "racing" frame.)
For true, fully featured bikes in the constructeur tradition, I think Mike's numbers are on the high side. As Chuck pointed out, they all were brought over from France by a handful of people. Clifford Graves' influence is paramount there. They mostly bought René Herse bikes, and maybe a dozen Singers.
It is true that French bikes were sold here, especially Alex Singer. Most were in fact "sport-touring" bikes with horizontal dropouts, to be equipped with Campy. Anything else was a hard sell. Even Spence Wolf, who brought in Singer "touring" bikes had them equipped with horizontal dropouts and standard racks, rather than low-riders. I think he dared going only so far...
How little the French constructeurs permeated the American cycling culture is shown by the fact that until recently, most of us believed that Jobst Brandt invented vertical dropouts (see one of the first Rivendell Readers with Jobst interview, in fact they have been used on most French bikes with fenders since about 1925) and that Blackburn invented low-rider racks in the early 1970s (his were a very close copy of the 1952 René Herse style, but of course made from flimsy aluminum rod instead of steel tubing). Or consider that people made long-cage conversions of Campagnolo Record and Nuovo Record derailleurs when better-shifting French alternatives were available off the shelf. In the 1970s and 80s, Phil Wood got a great reputation for the best hubs in the business while Maxi-Cars with adjustable bearings that could take side loads, double labyrinth seals and similar oversize axles still were in production in France, and cost less than Phil's without these features!
In the late 1980s, I lived in Austin, TX, raced, rode and knew most in the cycling community. When I was looking for the best bicycle money could buy for loaded touring, I came up with a Mercian frame, 700C wheels, Blackburn racks, Campy C-Record hubs and no fenders! Some suggested Phil Wood hubs, but that was as far as it went. It's a lovely bike, but it's a far cry from a true "camping" bike. Whether I could have afforded an Alex Singer, I don't know, but it never even came up in the discussion among the "cognoscenti."
Or consider Jobst Brandt's own experience touring Europe. He used a Cinelli racing bike with sew-up tires! He carried a spare freewheel to be able to change the gearing (so much for the weight savings of a racing bike). A 650B randonneur with a triple crank would have served him much better on the unpaved roads and also would have solved his problem of tires becoming unglued on downhills. (He switched to wood rims during the ride, if I remember correctly!) While it may be true that he didn't have money to buy a specific bike for the trip, I believe that he didn't know that bicycles specifically designed for the type of riding he enjoyed even existed! (Neither did I 30 years later!)
This does not deny that there were pockets of knowledge here and there. For example, one of the first "mountain bike" projects was designed around 650B wheels instead of 26". And some parts, such as Mafac cantilever brakes and TA cranks did find a following rather early.
The whole idea of the constructeur being different from a
framebuilder, of building an entire bicycle as an integrated machine,
is something that most of us have grasped only recently.
--
Jan Heine, Seattle
Editor/Publisher
Vintage Bicycle Quarterly
c/o Il Vecchio Bicycles
140 Lakeside Ave, Ste. C
Seattle WA 98122
http://www.mindspring.com/
>But Chuck,
>
>Your experience was extremely rare. There were those in the know
>such as yoursef, but it was like a quiet little secret. My guess is
>that no more than 70 to 80 Herse bikes and perhaps also less than
>100 Singers made it to the US from the 50's through 80's. If I'm
>wrong maybe the number is double that. You just happened to see
>them!
>
>In fact, there were two builders in Vermont making French style
>touring bikes in the 70's! But they weren't on the radar of most US
>tourists and certainly not of most racers.
>
>Note: A few Herse bikes and other high-end makes hit the east coast.
>But I was on the east coast and entering the sport in 1977 I missed
>out on knowing about these.
>
>For most of us, we never knew anything about these bikes. Campy was
>the religion and some among us knew the big picture. But almost all
>of us had no clue about french stuff at the time.
>
>Mike (making up for lost time) Kone in Boulder
>
>-------------- Original message --------------
>
>> Jan Heine wrote:
>> >
>> > We used to "ignore" the French and Italian machines as well, until some
>> > people went over there and brought back news from that cycling
>> > culture... For the Italians, that happened relatively early, while the
>> > "French phenomen" is more recent, dating from the early 1990s, I'd say.
>> > I am just the "second generation" in that respect - early proponents of
>> > French constructeur bikes were Grant Handley and Mike Kone. (Of course,
>> > French bikes in the U.S. are an older phenomenon than that, but the
>> > culture never really made it across until recently.)
>>
>>
>> Jan, can you elaborate?
>>
>> I thought the French bikes and the *French (bike) culture* made it over
>> to the US in the 50s and 60s, long before the 1990s. The Rene Herse and
>> Alex Singer bikes I first saw in the mid-70s when I started riding as an
>> adult had been brought back from France by wealthy Southern California
>> folks cycle touring in France in the 50s and 60s.
>>
>>
>> Chuck Schmidt
>> South Pasadena, Southern California
>>
>> .
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