I am interested by the elegant Sabliere currently for sale, as it is only the second Sabliere that I have seen that is not built from aluminium tubing - a form of construction for which he was well known in the late 70s and early 80s long before the cycle industry as a whole rushed headlong into this material, and which is of course now very ordinary...thanks to TIG welding.
Is the Sabliere who is mentioned the same Andre sabliere of alloy frame renown..or was there another one before him..a father or older brother?
I had a lot of dealings with Andre over a period of at least ten or so years, having met him at the 1981 Paris Cycle Show when he was demonstrating to an admiring public just how light he could build a whole bike. I recall a photo in the magazine Le Cycle showing his very young son, possibly only seven or eight years old, carrying this super-light bike.
The Sabliere I met and dealt with could only have been in his early to mid-40s, at the very oldest, unless nature was being extremely kind to him. This leads me to think that if this same frame-builder had built the Ebay Sabliere frame..he could only have been in his teens at the time.
The last real contact I had with Andre was in the early 90s when he had set off on yet another crazy project..that of recreating the Jacques Anquetil brand of cycle frame. He had at that time linked up with Jacques' daughter with the idea of opening a small factory in Lyon, to produce a range of frames bearing the JA name - the frames ranging from good training ones to Service de Course models.
I remember reluctantly placing an order for samples across the range..but running true to form Andre never delivered any. In fact I am still waiting for the small order of Sabliere carbon composite frames - Andre welded up the lugs and bracket etc and then bonded TVT-manufactured tubes into them - that I ordered for the Olympic games team riders I was sponsoring way back in 1984. The last that I heard about Andre was a comment from a wholesaler friend of mine who trades in Lyon. About five years or so ago he told me that Sabliere was still around but had moved into the world of IT and computers.
Just another comment on the elegant frame for sale - is it really a 1950s one, or is it perhaps much earlier?
IS there anyone out there who knew Sabliere well enough to help us out?
Norris Lockley..feeling distinctly under par...Settle UK
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