John, I also recently posted pics of my 1978 Mondia Special, bought from list member Jack Gabus. Mondia along with Allegro was one of the two best-known Swiss marques, but there were other Swiss bikes including Tigra, Condor and I think Cilo. Condor (or Kondor) was a names used by at least three different companies, only one of which was Swiss. Swiss bikes are interesting in that many use Swiss threaded BB's, the same as French EXCEPT the fixed cup is LH thread. Many Swiss bikes have a mix of French and Italian components, not surprising considering the location of Switzerland. They also often had multi-color fade paint jobs in an era when this was very rare for production bikes. Mondia may be the best known for this, but other Swiss brands used such paint schemes as well.
Regards,
Jerry Moos
> From: John Hurley <JHurley@jdabrams.com>
\r?\n> Subject: [CR] Mondia Special
\r?\n> To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
\r?\n> Cc: chasd@mindspring.com
\r?\n> Date: Monday, January 25, 2010, 9:22 AM
\r?\n> Charles and List,
\r?\n> Driving home thru the neighborhood yesterday, my beady eyes
\r?\n> spotted an
\r?\n> interesting bike in someone's open garage. It was up
\r?\n> against the wall,
\r?\n> behind some other stuff, so I was pretty amazed at myself
\r?\n> for even
\r?\n> having spotted it. But just the sight of slender
\r?\n> chromed fork tips,
\r?\n> with that certain elegant rake was enough to trigger my
\r?\n> radar. Since it
\r?\n> was a quiet street, I backed up for another look, but still
\r?\n> couldn't see
\r?\n> it very well. Curiosity finally overcame good sense,
\r?\n> and I just hopped
\r?\n> out for a closer look. It was a Mondia Special, in a
\r?\n> small to medium
\r?\n> frame size, with Campagnolo cranks and front derailleur,
\r?\n> and chrome
\r?\n> Nervex lugs. It had a rather short handlebar
\r?\n> stem. I didn't hang
\r?\n> around to scope it out entirely. Sadly, it looked
\r?\n> rather neglected,
\r?\n> with faded paint and some rust spotting.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> The brand was not familiar to me, so when I got home I
\r?\n> looked on the CR
\r?\n> website, but incorrectly assuming it was Italian, I didn't
\r?\n> find anything
\r?\n> at first. A Google search pointed me back to the CR
\r?\n> site under Swiss
\r?\n> brands. Later I searched eBay and found the very
\r?\n> pretty restored frame
\r?\n> that Charles wrote about two days ago
\r?\n> (250568074544). Finally I
\r?\n> searched the archives for any recent posts on Mondia and
\r?\n> found Charles'
\r?\n> note, which I had not seen previously.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> That's the end of my story, which I admit seems rather
\r?\n> pointless, except
\r?\n> to say that now I have a new old brand to admire, and to
\r?\n> add that there
\r?\n> is no telling how many lovely old bikes are sitting around
\r?\n> in peoples
\r?\n> garages.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> John Hurley
\r?\n> Austin, Texas, USA