Photos of Coppi's Bianchi Pista pursuit bikes with road dropouts:
http://www.vintagevelos.com/
Jan Heine wonders: "What about the "FC" in the lugs? A true sign of a "Fausto" bike, or just a "commemorative" series?"
I'd have to think that the builder did that for Fausto. Not much demand for a commemorative track bike in the late '40s I'd think (in fact I don't think I've ever seen nor heard of a commemorative track bike of any era or make). Bianchi did make commemorative road bikes however after Coppi won the TdF and the Worlds (Bianchi mod. Tour de France and mod. Campione del Mundo). Note that the commemorative road bikes didn't have anything hand cut in the lugs like the "Pokerissmo" card suites or "FC" either.
Fred Rednor asks: "My question, though, is whether only Coppi's bikes were built this way; or whether all (or most) Bianchi track bikes of the 1940s and '50s were built with road style dropouts instead of track style fork ends."
My uneducated guess would be that Coppi's track bikes were the only Bianchi pistas built with road style dropouts. The reason I believe this is that his track bikes were built for pursuits (long, steady effort) not for sprinting. If you look at the chainstays on these bikes you can see by their slope that the bottom bracket is not very high. I would guess that the bike he used for pursuit on the track was pretty much like his road bike; not built with sprinting in mind. Maybe one of his road frames with the derailleur hanger cut off the Campagnolo dropout. If you look at the photos it even looks like the bikes have oval bladed forks instead of round track blades! I've never seen any other Bianchi pistas with road dropouts other than Coppi's pursuit bikes.
Of course, like I said in the past, pure speculation, totally unsupportable and absolutely no documentation or footnotes to bolster my beliefs <grin>.
Anyone else with any thoughts?
Chuck Schmidt
South Pasadena, Southern California
United States of America
http://www.velo-retro.com (reprints, t-shirts & timelines)