Hello Charles,
I actually have afew pictures of alleged Cinelli frames with these funky badges. About 20 years ago we answered an ad in a San Jose Ca. newpaper classified section advertising "Singapore art and Cinelli frames" for sale, (of all things!). We hauled butt over there to check out the frames. The guy had 4 of them-- and just sold one as we arrived. This made us very anxious. They where painted Cinelli silver with flamboyant red seattube panels and headtubes. The lugs were chrome as were the semi-slopping crown and fork and stay ends. They had Cinelli decals with world bands separating the panels on the seattube. They were extremely attractive frames, as I recall they were about 52 cm c-c. What really threw me were the funky badges. I had never seen these before and I became suspicous, but I thought.... What do I know? The guy told us he lived in Singapore and had a Cinelli. While riding, he encountered a local who said "theres a shop that has some bikes like yours". He wound up purchasing the shops inventory of these frames. Back to the story... While examining the frames, I noticed that the masking of the chrome was uneven and the seat stay attachment was not like any Cinelli I had ever seen. They had Cinelli Mod B decals, the crown was ornate and semi-slopping, at that time I was only familar with Cinelli Mod Bs with flat crowns (l later discovered that this crown was infact used by Cinelli on Mod Bs and Mod Rivieras). I asked the guy if he had any wheels laying around, as I wanted to see if the frame were aligned. He then brought out his personal Cinelli Mod B and we took of the front and rear wheels. The wheels would not go into the front or rear dropouts! We tried fitting wheels into all the frames and none would accept wheels-- they were all grossly out of line. We went home very disappointed but glad we werent ripped off. Fast forward about 5 years and one of these frames appears on consignment at Velo Sport. I'm armed with a camera and take some pics. If theres interest I can post these on Wool Jersey for all to see. What I'd really like to do is create a Wool jersey page dedicated to Cinelli lookalikes. This could be the start of it.
Regards, Dave Martinez Fremont Ca wishing i could buy that certain yellow b.
chasds@mindspring.com wrote: wasting time I should be using to do something productive, I found this on ebay just now:
Surely this did not originate with cinelli? It's some kind of asian knock-off, right? I never saw a Cinelli badge that looked like this. except the badge-decal itself. the metal headbadges never looked like this, right?
The seller's description leaves the clear impression that this came out of the Cinelli operation. Too bad. Why lie about it? It's a cool knock-off. Although you'd never put it on a correct restoration I suppose.
I wonder if Cinelli approved these. I hear all the big italian marques are coming down hard on copyright violators. Kucharik quit making clothing with the old logos on them for exactly that reason.
Then again, maybe I missed the memo and this really is some kind of legit item..
Charles "wasting time in the SoCali sunshine" Andrews SoCal