Re: [CR]re: thoughts on de rosa

(Example: Component Manufacturers)

Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2007 12:26:45 -0800 (PST)
From: Jerome & Elizabeth Moos <jerrymoos@sbcglobal.net>
Subject: Re: [CR]re: thoughts on de rosa
To: "c. andrews" <chasds@mindspring.com>, classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
In-Reply-To: <002501c73689$9605cb10$6401a8c0@oemcomputer>


If the bike was a "Molteni replica", would that argue for lugs without cutouts? Did any of the frames Eddy rode have heart cutouts to give away the DeRosa origin? Of course, it was a different situation at Molteni with Merckx-badged frames than when Eddy was riding for Peugeot. At Molteni, if Eddy didn't mind the cutouts, no one else would have been likely to object. I suppose Falcon, Kessels and whoever else was selling Merckx frame under license might have objected to Eddy riding frames with DeRosa cutouts. But I get the impression that Eddy pretty much dictated terms of these commercial relationships, and probably took the attitude that the licensees should count themsleves lucky to be allowed to use his name. And indeed, such an attitude would probably have been justified on Merckx's part.

That brings up a question I have sometimes wondered about. Was Eddy or a company owned by him actually engaged in selling any of the frames bearing his name while he was still competing? Or did he limit himself only to licensing use of his name and image until he entered the actual manufacturing business after retirement from competition?

Regards,

Jerry Moos Big Spring, TX

"c. andrews" <chasds@mindspring.com> wrote: JJ wrote:

If Charles was in charge of marketing for them at the time he would be pushing for heart cutouts.

A money thing I bet.

John Jorgensen Torrance Ca USA

*********

I would have argued to keep the cutout. Seems to me it could have been cast in. If Masi could do those delicate cutouts, so could De Rosa. Perhaps give the lug slightly more surface area. If anything, cutouts make lugs easier to braze (I thought), and the thickness of those lugs would likely have ensured dimensional stability.

If it WAS a money thing, is was a nickle-and-dime error. The cost would have amounted to a few dollars per frame, at *most*--and maybe much less, in both initial tooling and final finishing. I'm not even suggesting they would have had to do much finishing to get enough of an effect to make the cutouts worth it.

Besides budgetary considerings, I expect De Rosa was still making a lot of frames for pros that were ultimately badged as something else, and the cutouts would have too obviously spilled the beans. But having two sets of lugs would not have cost all that much, amortized over many frames, and the marketing advantages, then and now, I think, would have outweighed the cost.

The other possibility is that a fetish for simplicity was at work, beyond budget considerations.

My guess is that if you asked De Rosa about that now, the question would probably make little sense to him. It was a long time ago.

I wish he had kept the cutouts though.

(and I'd bet the sole reason the Confente lugs did not have a cast-in cutout was because Medici planned to used those lugs on their own frames..the source of the original dust-up between Mario and Simonetti, right? Do I have that right? The other reason may have been that a panto'd cutout was cleaner and more precise, and since Confente was a very low-production builder demanding high prices for his work, the additional expense of panto work was unimportant compared to the precision of the final product.)

Charles Andrews
SoCal