If I remember, a good friend "in the day" bought a bunch of Barum's and was extremely pleased - he was used to vittoria cx and cg's and he loved them. Not much later, though, they seemed very hard to get. And in the early 90's I aquired them for sale when I owned Bicycle Classics Inc. The ones I got were horrible - not straight, scary base tapes - sold them out with some scary disclaimers and advice that they might be best used as a spare.
My guess is that at one point some emerged that were really great - but the good ones were available for just a short while and as Steven said they were pretty bad otherwise.
Mike Kone in Boulder CO
> John wrote:
\r?\n>
\r?\n> "Even back in the day Czech-made Barum tubulars were very highly
\r?\n> regarded. Whatever happened to Barum? Is there any connection with Tufo,
\r?\n> I wonder?"
\r?\n>
\r?\n> That is a new one to me. The only reason that anybody in my neighborhood
\r?\n> used Barums was because they were a good value for the money, but nobody
\r?\n> ever said they were "good". They were often half the price of any other
\r?\n> tubular that could be purchased, so value for money was actually great,
\r?\n> especially as a training tubular. Another way to save money with a
\r?\n> Barum, was with glue. The tires were in fact so tight, when you were
\r?\n> able to get the tires on the rim, you could almost do without glue.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> Steven Maasland
\r?\n> Moorestown, NJ