Steve Maas wrote:
> I continually marvel that a country with a national
> personality that is so
> socially conservative could produce so many
> bicycles--not just
> Hetchins--that are so completely over the top, to
> use the British term.
> The contrast is absolutely extraordinary. It's as if
> there was a
> component of the British personality in painful
> conflict with the
> stereotype, just aching to get out. And this is how
> it was expressed,
> not just by the folks who made them, but by those
> who bought and loved
> them.
>
> Bicycles from Britain say more about the time,
> place, and people they
> came from than those of any other nation. (France is
> perhaps a close
> second. In contrast, Italian bikes say virtually
> nothing about Italy;
> they could have been made anywhere.) Look at my
> Carlton, for example.
> Handsome, carefully hand-cut lugs combined with
> crapola drop outs
> stamped out of an old chunk of 3/16" steel plate.
> What on earth were
> they thinking of? This says quite a bit about how
> the country's industry
> couldn't get its act together back in the 1960s. The
> Hetchins "curly"
> stays were purportedly based on a need to "soften"
> the ride, and were
> based on both an incorrect assessment of the need
> and an incorrect
> technical concept. But they look cool, really cool.
> Quintessential
> mid-twentieth-century British industrial reasoning,
> succeeding in spite
> of itself. How can you not love it?
>
The above is a more complete expression of what I was attempting to say in my contribution to the recent Paramount thread.
There is a kind of Phineas Fogg quality to British cycles that I just love. So muck quirky individual poersonality, each marque -- with tall those delightful names -- reflecting in some inexplicable way the town or street the manufacturer called home.
And the British cycling industry was so organic. They were not trying to prove anything to anyone. They needed bicycles and so they made them and the rest was joyous anarchy matched to British steel, a very traditional product.
I find a sameness about many Italian frames, then & now. I confess a weakness for De Rosa, but are they really so very different from equivalent Masi & Colnago etc. -- but for the hearts and clubs and M or whatever? All very finely made, no doubt about that, but I expect that from all the reputable builders, wherever they are from.
I apologize to the list for skewering the Paramount sacred cow and helping pile the kindling up for a public burning. But even the most holy of bovines has got its ribs and briskets and chops and for me, one lone high end USA-made classic frame does not a proud tradition make.
I'll wager that the obsession with Masi has much to do with the fact that they were USA-made for a period, and less to do with their Italian origins.
Canada's contribution to cycling frames is hardy worth mentioning. We make great fur coats, hockey sticks and maple syrup. CCM (Canada's Schwinn, but also a major maker of hockey gear) made just one or two models out of 531 but they were not that special.
Much later, Giuseppe Marinoni (a former Italian tailor) began making classic Italian style frames just a few miles from here, some incised with maple leaves or fleu de lys (depending if the buyer was an anglophone or francophone), but that's about it for my country.
Emanuel Lowi
Montreal, Quebec