I am the purchaser of the circa 1951 Frejus on UK ebay, item no. 8824365886. The price was a bit over the odds, as evidenced by the fact that I was the only bidder, but I had confirmed that it was a Supercorsa, a model I have been after, and they don't come on the market too often over here.
The frame is in good condition and I am fortunate in already having most of the right bits to build it up - Frejus/Universal brakes, Simplex derailleurs, Frejus double crankset, FB hubs, Universal bars/stem. What I don't have is an image of how the frame should be finished and I would really like to get it as close to the original as possible - to quote the period brochure "the frames are nickel plated all over, and then clear lacquered to give a unique steel grey finish. The head lugs and front fork are chrome plated and highly polished; head tube is enamelled dark blue, with the world's championship head design of Frejus, name in scarlet on the down tube and a world's championship flash on the seat tube". I don't yet know whether the frame is good enough under the paint to re-plate or whether I shall have to try to achieve a similar effect with paint (was there a painted version?). Has anyone out there got any pictures of a frame correctly finished, details of decals or anything else? Any help would be very much appreciated.
Seems to me this would make a great bike for L'Eroica - not too modern but not too far behind modern standards of performance (I will need all the help I can get). Just to be controversial, I believe that the late 1940s, very early 1950s were when the modern steel lightweight was born - frame geometry; light weight; quality aluminum components; slick wide ratio derailleurs which didn't require back-pedalling or weird and wonderful tensioning devices. I know that some of these things were around earlier, but this is the timeframe when it all came together and things remained remarkably constant until the widespread adoption of different materials in the 1990s.
Hugh Thornton
Cheshire, England