I just love it......!!!!
Doesn't the same snobbery exist today with all the top-drawer equipped, be-jewelled Rene Herse, Singer, Cinelli, Bianchi, etc etc., or in the UKs case Hetchin Millenniums; Magnum Bonum de-luxe Superb Syders etc etc???
As I said...nothing's changed in 60 years!
Derek Athey Honiton, Devon UK
On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 3:23 PM, P.C. Kohler <kohl57@yahoo.com> wrote:
> "It is just the wasted opportunity of the one-time greatest cycle
> manufacturer that I find so disappointing"
>
> Hugh Thornton
> Cheshire, England"
>
> True. Raleigh wasted an opportunity to compete in mass start professional
> racing bicyles in 1940-60s. Which is, I might suggest, one of the reasons
> they were indeed the greatest cycle manufacturing firm on the planet. They
> cherry-picked, deliberately and carefully, what they made and to whom they
> sold it. And in doing so, they literally created and sold what is, even
> today, the standard bicycle of the world: the famed, often imitated but
> never matched (and off topic here) No. 1/DL-1 28" wheel, rod-braked
> roadster. And they also helped to establish "lightweight" (a relative terms
> in a land of coaster brake Schwinns) cycling in the United States.
>
> I suspect more than schoolboys bought and rode Lentons, Super Lentons and
> Clubmans... or Britain had a lot of very well-off lads indeed; I sure
> couldn't afford to buy one at those prices on my newspaper route earnings.
> And, if the ads be believed, "Reg Harris Rides a Lenton". And he did, too,
> on his roadtraining rides which apparently had sufficient pub stops en route
> to qualify him as a duffer and thus ideal for a Lenton Sports. By the way,
> Raleigh flew Reg to Lagos, Nigeria, for the 1957 Independence Day
> celebrations where, in this most cycle mad of all African countries, he led
> a procession of Raleighs riding, a Super Lenton! Raleigh even sold Lentons
> in Nigeria. If you want to meet true Raleigh enthusiasts, go to Nigeria not
> England.
>
> One of the reasons I suspect the RRA is distained now and then was that it
> was sold as a complete cycle, cost a packet (like 40 pound), subject to
> Clement Atley's confiscatory purchase tax (like 33 per cent on a complete
> bike!) and thus associated with poseurs, rich boys, demob windfall spenders
> or, as you prefer, "old fogeys". The snob element in certain elements of
> British cycling is amazing really and I suspect the RRA was a symbol of
> everything certain snobby club riders loathed if not envied. There was, in
> fact, a long waiting list for the RRA and one of the reasons the improved
> Clubman was introduced in 1950. The number of old fogeys riding awheel in
> the UK was apparently quite large!
>
> Anyway, I've talked myself into making my '48 RRA and '58 RRA Moderne my
> designed cycles du weekend and can but hope to encounter someone riding a
> '48 Bianchi or '58 Helyett so we can go mano a mano.
>
> Peter Kohler
> Washington DC USA