Well, it seems there is more to this story that I first thought. I bought in 2005 and am just now finishing building up, a Duravia frame which I believe to be circa 1955. It has been discussed here that this frame was actually a rebadged Mecadural, one of several brands under which Mecadural aluminum frames were sold, including Mercier. Indeed several members posted photos of frames of identical construction to mine badged as Mecadural, Mercier and other marques. The mixte bike Hilary offered this morning is likewise of identical construction (apart from being a mixte) to my Duravia and those other Mecadural frames posted some months ago.
But the other, newer non-mixte Mercier Hilary offered this morning, although aluminum, is of entirely different construction from my frame, Hilary's mixte Mercier, or the various Mecadurals posted a few months back. To my eye, the newer Mercier looks much cruder, though crudeness is of course in the eye of the beholder. Now it seems you are saying that while many Duravia-badged frames from the 50's were made by Mecadural, this newest Mercier was made not by Mecadural but by Duravia.
So what was the relationship between Duravia, Mecadural and Mercier? It seems you are saying that Duravia was an actual manufacturer of frames, not only a reseller of Mecadural frames, or an alternate brand name owned by Mecadural. So at what point did Duravia actually start manufacturing frames? Or were thay doing so all along, before or even at the same time as selling rebadged Mecadural frames? I suppose they might conceivably have been making steel frames while buying the aluminum ones from Mecadural. But I have never seen nor heard of a Duravia steel frame, and the very name Duravia suggests a Duraluminum frame incorporating aircraft technology.
While I personally find the newer Mercier offered by Hilary rather crude, the older Duravia/Mecadurals actually strike me as rather elegant, much like the Caminargents. The Caminargents of course have the characteristic octagonal tubes, though their advantage may have been more in the assembly of the frames than in the performance. But both the Caminargent and the Mecadural seem to have been well integrated, with nearly all fittings cast into the lugs. For example, my Mecadural/Duravia has no clampon fittings other than the rear brake hanger for the Mafac Dural Forge, and even that could have been avoided by using SP brakes. The shifter boss is riveted on the toptube, and all cable guides and stops are cast into the the lugs, rear brake bridge or the chainstay bridge. Fittings cast in or riveted on include the shifter boss, cable guides for the chainstay mounted RD and the RD mounting plate, eyelet for the forward attachment of the RD return spring, brake cable guides and stops, pump peg behind the downtube, and the vertically drilled mount for the front mudguard. Indeed there seem to be two sets of guides for the RD cable, evidently to allow a two wire Cyclo or a single wire Simplex.
It would be interesting to learn how many French companies actually manufactured aluminum frames prior to the "modern" Vitus frames. We know these included Barra, Caminade, Mecadural and now it seem Duravia as well. I wonder how many others? We've had it seems three different manufacturers offered/outed just today, with the eBay Barra mixte and Hilary's Merciers by Mecadural and Duravia. Meantime, most US cycists today probably credit Gary Klein with inventing the aluminum frame.
Regards,
Jerry Moos
Big Spring, Texas, USA
> From: Norris Lockley <nlockley73@googlemail.com>
\r?\n> Subject: [CR] DURAVIA - Frankenstein's frame
\r?\n> To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
\r?\n> Date: Thursday, November 12, 2009, 9:04 PM
\r?\n> *DURAVIA.... that is
\r?\n> the real name of the Mercier-branded D-I-Y
\r?\n> bolt-together aluminium frame that Hilary is selling*
\r?\n> **
\r?\n> I recall, about six years ago, clambering up the well-worn
\r?\n> stone treads of a
\r?\n> spiral staircase leading from the loading bay of a formerly
\r?\n> magnificent mill
\r?\n> that stood just forty or so meters across the road from the
\r?\n> River Rhone in a
\r?\n> tiny forsaken town about sixty kilometres south of Lyon.
\r?\n> That the town was
\r?\n> surrounded by some of the finest northern Rhone vineyards
\r?\n> producing St
\r?\n> Joseph and Cornas wines was a real bonus, particularly when
\r?\n> there were
\r?\n> plenty of degustations to be had, in roadside cellars en
\r?\n> route.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> The other bonus to be had, after enduring all those glasses
\r?\n> of gorgeous
\r?\n> wine, was the mill. All its weaving machinery had been long
\r?\n> since removed,
\r?\n> but the large overhead drive shafts with their wooden and
\r?\n> cast-iron pulleys
\r?\n> were still in situ, as were the broad leather driving
\r?\n> belts, but by now they
\r?\n> had aged and darkened, but still had not cracked - just
\r?\n> like a well
\r?\n> cossetted Ideale Rebour sadlle. The smell of the place was
\r?\n> fantastic.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> So what was I doing there..?.Well the mill had been
\r?\n> acquired by the charity
\r?\n> EMMAUS as a retail outlet for all the bric and brac that
\r?\n> the garages and
\r?\n> lofts of the neighbouring villages could throw out....and
\r?\n> generally speaking
\r?\n> where ther is bric - a brac in France there's old bikes
\r?\n> aplenty. And so it
\r?\n> transpired.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> To the right at the top of the staircase stood a
\r?\n> platform..on the platform
\r?\n> stood six bikes..one of which was a Stella..but another was
\r?\n> a very unusual
\r?\n> machine, not just by the nature of its esoteric
\r?\n> aaccessories but more so by
\r?\n> the nature of the construction of the frame.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> Now if you have already had a look at Hilary's aluminium
\r?\n> MERCIER, then I
\r?\n> will wager a bottle of my good Rhone Syrah to your
\r?\n> bottle of tasty
\r?\n> Californian Cabernet Sauvugnon, that the distinctive
\r?\n> structural details of
\r?\n> the MERCIER are still fresh in your mind.
\r?\n> Unforgetable....as Nat King Cole
\r?\n> used to sing..and I'll wager too ,that he hadn't even seen
\r?\n> a DURAVIA.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> It's a fact that I generally drive ugly cars...and I am
\r?\n> fascinated by ugly
\r?\n> design..and bike frames do not come much uglier than the
\r?\n> DURAVIA...unless
\r?\n> its a MECADURAL...Hilary has kindly juxtaposed just such a
\r?\n> frame for the
\r?\n> purpose of this comparison.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> In the 40s most Mecadurals carried the names of Mercier,
\r?\n> Anton Magne, the
\r?\n> Pelissier Brothers et al..and some carried DURAVIA.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> Although my first siting of the Rhone valley Duravia was
\r?\n> love at first
\r?\n> sight, I soon realised that the object of my affection had
\r?\n> some serious
\r?\n> warts and blemishes some of which were more than skin deep.
\r?\n> My
\r?\n> long-suffering wife just could not believe that I intended
\r?\n> to get up close
\r?\n> and cuddly with the Duravia, but that's just what I did..I
\r?\n> examined every
\r?\n> one of its cast and allen-key clamped lugs.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> Suffice to say not one was fully intact..almost all showed
\r?\n> some form of
\r?\n> cracking, the seat-lug had been welded, the bottom headlug
\r?\n> had had a bolt
\r?\n> hole drilled straight through lug and tube and the bracket
\r?\n> shell needed
\r?\n> urgent stitching together surgery. But still the frame
\r?\n> enticed me..but
\r?\n> reluctantly, very reluctantly I did not buy it as I could
\r?\n> really see no
\r?\n> practical way in which it could be repaired and made
\r?\n> rideable.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> However a couple of years later I won, on French Ebay, what
\r?\n> the seller
\r?\n> described as an ALAN framed bike..but the photo was so bad
\r?\n> that it could
\r?\n> have been anything with gold frame tubes. At 35 euros it
\r?\n> still had the
\r?\n> advantage of being, unusually, all GIPIEMME equipped.
\r?\n> However when it
\r?\n> arrived at my house in France I unpacked not an ALAN but a
\r?\n> seriously
\r?\n> attractive and totally unblemished DURAVIA...all cast and
\r?\n> bolted silver lugs
\r?\n> and gold anodised tubes. What a beauty and what un
\r?\n> undemanding and pleasant
\r?\n> ride.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> Researching the brand DURAVIA has been difficult and it has
\r?\n> recently been
\r?\n> revived yet again for a range of modest sports bikes.
\r?\n> Almost certainly the
\r?\n> frames were built in the Lyon region which has been the
\r?\n> home over the years
\r?\n> to several builders using aluminium or carbon tubes..Just
\r?\n> think VITUS,
\r?\n> RHONAL, RBE, Guichard ,TVT. These latter frames that
\r?\n> emerged, in 1983, from
\r?\n> a factory in the tiny village of St Genix-sur-Guiers, twixt
\r?\n> Lyon and
\r?\n> Chambery, but all the lugs and other aluminium parts were
\r?\n> made in a factory
\r?\n> just to the south of Lyon. There is a distinct design
\r?\n> similarity between the
\r?\n> Duravia lugs and those of tVT..but by the time the latter
\r?\n> had been
\r?\n> developed, CIBA-Geigy had invented Araldite epoxy glue..no
\r?\n> more clamped and
\r?\n> bolted joints.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> However I think that Duravia started its life in another
\r?\n> tiny village just
\r?\n> to the NE of Lyon..but I did not go into that particular
\r?\n> mill on the banks
\r?\n> of the Saone,until a couple of years later..and the
\r?\n> visit almost cost me
\r?\n> 1,000,000 francs.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> The moral of this story so far is that anyone drinking
\r?\n> enough good quality
\r?\n> red Rhone wine, when driving down the Rhone Valley, might
\r?\n> just be lucky
\r?\n> enough to find a badly cracked and neglected DURAVIA cycle
\r?\n> in an old mill.
\r?\n> The second moral is that DURAVIA owners must not be too
\r?\n> cack-handed and
\r?\n> should not lean too heavily on the Allen keys when
\r?\n> servicing their frames
\r?\n> and under no circumstances should they add extra leverage
\r?\n> by using a tube
\r?\n> slipped onto the shank of the key, otherwise...not even I
\r?\n> will want to buy
\r?\n> that frame!
\r?\n>
\r?\n> Norris Lockley
\r?\n>
\r?\n> Settle-sur-Rhone-et-Saone, UK