--- On Mon, 2/8/10, Steve Whitting <ciocc_cat@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Well,
> the paint and decals on my pre-1983 Ciocc San
> Cristobal have held up just fine, but then again I'm
> her original owner and I've taken very good care of
> her.
Ditto on my '82 Ciocc Mockba 80 with some superb chrome, too. But Masi, Colnago and Cinelli loved that nail varnish lacquer that looked translucent and gorgeous when new and wore, well, like nail varnish! The early Masi 3v's (mine is an '85) have horrible finishes, orange pealy and again so thin, tape will (and did) lift it right off to the white primer below. One of the US cycling magazines of the era mentioned the crummy finish in their review so it wasn't just me!
How many CR Listers have a Ciocc? You sure don't hear much about them around here but I think they are a very underated Italian marque. I got mine as a frameset from a fellow Lister and love her. She has the classic uber tight angles/hard tailed/touchy handling of the early 1980s like my 84 Peugeot PX which I find intoxicating, at least for the first 50 miles! Any longer, and you really know you've been riding a racing bike. I think the Mockba was then the top of the line model with the tightest angles but there's not much documentation out there. And the coolest thing about owning a Ciocc is explaining 1) how to pronounce it and 2) convince people that Italians actually had word with an umlaut in it!
Peter Kohler
Washington DC USA