Happy New Year to everybody! I know that this greeting is a little late, but this email represents my third attempt to send it since a catastrophic collapse in my computer system forced it into early retirement, taking with it all the information, emails, photos etc that, had I known how to do the process, I would have transferred to hard disc..or whatever the measure is that one is supposed to take to avoid losong without trace, important archive material. So I have been computer-less since Christmas and have only just, today, managed to get the new one up and running.
I would like to apologise to a number of List members who had sent me emails, and who will still be waiting for replies. I had accumulated quite a lot of correspondence and intended dealing with it over the holiday period..but will not be able to do so now..so please accept my sincere apologies.
Now as for Hinault's bikes in that Coors Classic , his steel frames, or those on the car roof appear to be nof French manufacture, judging by some of the detail I can make out, but the very long champhered top-eye plate looks quite English in style. In the early 80s there were still plenty of top-class frame builders around in France
As for the carbon frame that Hinault is riding in the second stage..this looks like the prototype TVT/Look that the team were testing. The frames were made by TCT -"Tubes-Composites-Tisses" a firm that had pioneered this design in 1981. I had imported three of the first six made and then got the strange idea of becoming the UK importer. At the 1983 Paris Show I tried to negotiate the sole rights to the frames but discovered that a certain French business tycoon, Bernard Tapie- the owner of the La Vie Claire- Look team -was also on the TCT stand negotiating sole World rights..so I didn't stand much of a chance. As the triumphant Tapie said to me "Tant pis!"
Tapie negotiated a 5-year contract to build the black carbon frames that bore the LOOK transfer. TVT did not make the frames, just simply manufactured the tubing, and forks, and a small foundary/machine shop in Lyon,.Lyon-Raccords, supplied the lugs and ends. The LOOK-built carbon frames quickly gained a a reputation, certainly in the UK, for de-bonding, so much so that TCT revoked the contract after three years because they feared that de-bonding frames would give the newly-born carbon frame market a very bad name, and the company had great ambitions to become the Reynolds or Columbus of the carbon frame industry.
TCT dropped that name and became TVT "Tubes-Verre-Tisse" and started building frames in its own right...the design being altered, the seat-stays being curved in above the brake-bridge..and Delgado rode the new model with "Pinarello" transfers , and a red livery, to victory in the 1987 Tour de France.
Needless to say, Tapie did not take the rejection and annulment of the contract lightly, setting up his own company..and embarking on a long and very expensive law suit...but that, as they say, is another story.
Norris Lockley..asuming that this email will actually leave my new computer..Settle UK