That is a rather nifty machine - I think Titanium often gets a bad reputation around here, but it can often ride very similar to steel. Sure aren't many other makers that make their own tubes! The overall look of the bike is fabulous and anyone who owns such an example is quite lucky indeed.
On a different note, in some respects, Cinelli had a smidge of Contstructuer inside him. If my understanding is correct, there were many varieties of Cinelli bar/stem/brake lever combos - and he did do his own hubs (certainly not for touring reasons of course). I don't think he was specifically after a Constructeur bike, but his bikes with interesting bar/stem combos and fenders certainly were in that direction. There is a photo of an Italian trade show booth for Cinelli during the late 50's - many of the bikes had fenders and there was a huge display of bars and stems. Cinelli understood clearly that there was more to cycling than just race bikes for pure racers. But beyond that, he never built bikes with the asthetic or practicality for touring of the French makers (no racks, no internal wiring).
Again, its all good...
Mike Kone in Boulder CO
> Peter Jourdain wrote:
\r?\n>
\r?\n> "Many French constructeurs made frames and maybe racks and a stem (my
\r?\n> '47 constructeur C.Dardenne is an example of this) then added Simplex
\r?\n> gears, Mavic or Mephisto rims, etc. While wonderful machines, they are
\r?\n> hardly fashioned from a raw chunk of metal, as a sculptor would work
\r?\n> with marble. And remember, these guys never made the metal, rubber, or
\r?\n> tubing. They bought tube sets just like the supposed generic
\r?\n> "framebuilders." To that extent they are as much "assemblers" as anybody
\r?\n> else."
\r?\n>
\r?\n> The only true "constructeur" that I can think of, were you to include
\r?\n> the requirement that they make their own metal, rubber or tubing is the
\r?\n> Italian buider Passoni. Passoni which still exists today as a high end
\r?\n> builder of custom titanium and other unmentionable materials started out
\r?\n> in the early 1970's (1972 if I am not mistaken)under the leadership of
\r?\n> an engineer by the name of Riva. Ing. Riva started making bike frames
\r?\n> out of sheets of commercial pure titanium. He would then form the sheets
\r?\n> into tubes which were then fashioned into bike frames. His initial
\r?\n> production was about 6 frames per year. These first frames were sold
\r?\n> under the name Trecia. Beyond the frames, he also made integrated
\r?\n> handlebars, stems and brake levers (made to measure), frames with
\r?\n> integrated seatpost (now once again popular) and the occasional
\r?\n> chainset. All of these items were made starting from the sheets of
\r?\n> commercial pure titanium. He would also adapt componentry to fit on his
\r?\n> frames, by doing such things as brazing on the brake center bolts onto
\r?\n> the fork crowns and brake bridge. In the 1980's, when the Passoni family
\r?\n> became involved in production, the name appearing on the bikes changed
\r?\n> from Trecia to Passoni.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> I have tried to find a photo of a 1970's or early 80's Trecia/Passoni
\r?\n> posted on the web somewhere but have not been able to find any (they are
\r?\n> very rare). The construction methods and frame designs remained much the
\r?\n> same from the 70's until past 1990, so I believe a representative
\r?\n> example of a CR-period correct Trecia/Passoni bike can be seen on
\r?\n> Kauzo's website:
\r?\n> http://members.jcom.home.ne.jp/
\r?\n> http://members.jcom.home.ne.jp/
\r?\n>
\r?\n> Kauzo's bike has a Passoni-made integrated handlebars and stem (but not
\r?\n> the brake levers) and a Passoni-made seatpost (not the ISp version in
\r?\n> this case). The frame tubing, drop-outs and BB shell are all Passoni
\r?\n> products.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> Steven (having close ties to Passoni) Maasland
\r?\n> Moorestown, NJ
\r?\n> USA