A different version of this tandem...of a tandem..turned up on French Ebay earlier this year. Normally these machines would have the engine over the front wheel, after the style of the Velosolex.I have seen quite a lot of well-known constructeur brand tandems including Follis with this type of rig.
Way back in the 80s I was spending some part of my summer holiday in France but ended up in the repair shop for my friend Jean-Marie Duret (Geliano marque).. In a little storeroom he had one such tandem, quite a beatutiful machine with this dinky motor mounted forwards of the bars. It had just been repaired. About three years ago I was once again visiting him and noticed that he still had the same tandem, in the same place. He explained, in a matter-of-fact voice that the customer had not got around to collecting it...as though some 18 to 20 years was not an over duly long time. I suggested that in the UK we would have sold the machine to defray our storage costs..a long time ago.I
At around that time I was experimenting with getting my wife on the back of a tandem...but had chosen the hilly roads around the Vercor as a baptism of fire. On the way back from that holiday I called again on Jean-Marie with the idea of making an offer for the motorised tandem..in an attempt to make the riding easier on my legs and hopefully to reduce the amount of whining and complaining from my stoker. However Jean-Marie could not be budged..and no amount of Euros would persuade him..it was all a matter of honour and trust..and respect for a long=established "client".
The following year..our pilgrimage around some of the bike shops of central France took us once again into Jean-Marie's workshops..but this time there was a different air about the place. Monique, J-M's wife explained that the time had arrived to hand the reins over to the new generation...Jean-Marie had entered "sa retraite" his retirement...and his son Franck had taken over the business just as J-M had, from his father."It is a matter of "succession"
I had known Franck since 1983 when he was only a young schoolboy of 15. He had spent holidays with us in Yorkshire..learning and brushing up his spoken English..so that he could impress the Japanese and Taiwanese businessmen at the Trade Shows..and so that he could, as he so delightfully put it," chat up your English petites fleurs".
That day Franck came forward to greet my wife and me..a cheeky smile on his face.."Now you deal with me, me new boss..we make good "beezness" together..just like old times ..with papa"
After much of the same I dared to open the door to the small store=room to display the motorised tandem, fully expecting it to be where it had stood for over twenty years 650B red Wolber tyres melted and decaying in a way that no other tyre ever does.. and gluing the "ensemble"to the quarry-tiled floor. The sheet steel door groaned on its hinges..and a chink of light became a crack..widening into a gap through which I saw..an empty store-room.
Perhaps it had been moved to another ..even longer term store..or worse still perhaps the owner had actually collected it ! But the response was worse that I could have ever expected in that country of honour, of respect, of brotherhood..
"You know, Norreeeece, you 'member you taught me good Uuunnh? Now how I say? It eeez "New brush he wipes up clean!" Eet has gone, how say you, to the dechette-tip!" From this wonderfully garbled Franglais I was to understand that the tandem had been sent to the waste tip..and worse still..that some 40 years of unsold stock that had been gathering dust in the old farm buildings that formed the Geliano warehouse...had met the same fate. How you say "Mon Dieu!! Merde"
It is not uncommon in some of the country towns, on "Vide Grenier" or "Brocante" sales days to spot the bicycle version of this mechanised two-wheeled transport. Most of the ones I have seen were either Motoconfort or Gnome et Rhone. The latter was to become very famous decades later, after many acquisitions and transitions, as SNECMA..one of France's leading engine makers and research companies that has enormous workshops scattered around Paris. The solo version of these machines always, from what I have seen, has the engine mounted at the bottom bracket, sometimes cradled between the seat and down tubes, and sometimes slung under the down-tube itself. These motorised bikes which were to develop into the autocycle, and later the moped look far more attractive than the fairly grotesque looking tandem on Ebay.
Norris Lockley..Settle, UK