Here is what my friend David had to say about Saavedra. He is a collector that lives down in Argentina and showed me a lot of the stuff he had. Pretty nice stuff.
\u201cI have some information on Saavedra, including some old press cuttings from the 1950's I think. The family includes at least two famous racers, who then began to produce parts. Try to check out Cosme Saavedra in Google and I think quite a lot of information will appear.\u201d
\u201cOne very strange part,which I have pictures of is a patented foot brake system for the rear wheel. In the 1960's to 80's they produced groupsets which contained some parts made by RINO in Italy. I believe most of the groupset parts were made in Italy, then prepared here with additional logos engraved into the aluminium. The 80's groupsets look very similar Campagnolo Grand Sport. At some stage I believe an effort was made to produce cranksets here, but they got a bit of a bad name as some of them cracked and bad news travelled fast. By the 1990's things were slowing down, but apparently there was a lot of exportation to the USA of light sprint rims of good quality and price. (Most went to San Diego). Saavedra rims are still available here but I believe production steadily declined and in recent times has stopped or almost stopped. The last line of rims wasn't that light or competative in price. I also heard about four four years ago, that Saavedra was looking for finance to build up the company again, but they were unable to find investors.\u201d
\u201cSaavedra is and was a family business based in Liniers, which was run by different members of the family after the racers sadly passed. The company did have some good times, especially in periods when import taxes were high.
In the 80's you could buy an Italian frame which came with a local headbadge. I don't remember what make the frames were except that they were made of Columbus tubes and then they stuck on some very gaudy Saavedra stickers over the top of the clear coat. What I do remember was that the frames were well made.\u201d
\u201cIt is true that the 1980's rear mechs had Saavedra engraved on the outside and Made in Italy appeared in small letters on the inside. I have quite a lot of the stuff, but no hubs. They were still selling the brake sets around 2000, it was 80's old stock and excellent quality. During this phase they also sold stems roughly engraved with famous names like Peugeot\u201d
\u201cThe bottom line is the Company did try to produce quality parts to appear to those who wanted someting Made in Argentina, but in reality in order to do this many of the parts were imported, then made to look Argentine.\u201d
Hope that is usefull.
Hubert d'Autremont
Burlington, VT