The postcard is promoting our book
"The Competition Bicycle - A Photographic History"
http://www.vintagebicyclepress.com/
What is "wrong" with the photo is indeed the saddle height. The reason is simple: The bike was given by Eddy Merckx to the Pope, and the Pope passed it on to a priest who loved to ride. The priest lowered the saddle and raised the stem.
When we photographed the bike, we lowered the stem, but raising the saddle exposed some truly ugly scratch marks. So we had two choices:
1. Raise the seat and show the scratches. However, when Merckx rode the bike, the seatpost didn't have scratches, so this would be incorrect.
2. Leave the seat as is, and the saddle would be lower than when Merckx rode it. This also would be incorrect.
We chose 2.
The bike was ridden by Merckx at the 1974 World's in Montreal. In the book, you see a historic photo during the Worlds, and you see that Merckx had the brake cables running "left-front" and that his fork was painted. The bike has the pink and yellow bands that indicate that Merckx won the Giro and the Tour de France that year... The bar tape was white, though. And the saddle indeed was higher.
I am proud that even a knowledgeable curmudgeon like Mike Barry could find only two "errors" in a book with 176 pages and 34 bicycles spanning more than a century. The first was a conscious choice on our part. The second error concerns the Cervino derailleur, which according to Mike could be shifted without first adjusting the chain tension. We fixed that error for the German edition that just appeared.
Jan Heine
Editor
Bicycle Quarterly
2116 Western Ave.
Seattle WA 98121
http://www.vintagebicyclepress.com