In 1977 I sold Windsor bikes. They were distributed by Windsor Enterprises in National City, about fifty minutes South of my shop. The company was owned by Rosendo Padilla. He looked like he stepped out of a Zorro movie and was one of my favorite business men to do business with; very forthright he was and he seemed to appreciate me as a dealer for my hard work and straight ahead approach to things. I wish he was still in the bike business.
The lower end Windsor bikes were made of low grade tubing, it is true, but if we keep in mind what they sold for, they were a solid bargain. I was proud to sell them and I still see some that I sold in the late seventies. Due to the Nervex pro-esque lugs, they are often compared to much higher end bikes. Compare them to their peers and they look just fine. They were competition for Nishiki Olympics and Internationals.
There was a model called the Competition which was the poor man's Windsor Pro. It had good tubing and looked like a Pro. They had an el cheapo (can I get away with that term when talking about a Mexican bike?) headset. There wasn't enough stack height to install a normal top quality road headset. I am responsible for installing quite a few Campy track headsets in those bikes. I'd do the full machine job with the Campy tool set and they turned out very nice indeed. I had one of those bikes for several years. I had it painted a light metallic blue at Cyclart. I seldom rode it until I had it repainted red with titanium colored seat tube and head tube. After that, it was my main bike. Color means a lot to me and I stay away from the cool colors now that I've identified that trait in me.
The Pros were pretty nice and were surely worth what they cost.
I was proud to sell those bikes and to deal with Mr. Padilla. He also imported bikes from Japan. They were called SR. That is probably where the idea of Japanese Windsors comes from. That is, unless there were bikes from Japan and labeled Windsor. If that's the case, they most likely wouldn't have had any relation to Mr. Padilla's operation or the Mexican Windsors.
Chuck Hoefer
Vista, California USA
>
>> Hi: I really like the looks of Windsor bikes and wanted to learn a
>> lot more about them than some links on the internet will allow me to.
>> I notice that there was an Italian influenece on the Mexican
>> production and heard about the Eddie Merkx controversy and everything
>> but the one thing that I am most curious about right now is that
>> there seems to be no consistency in their head badges whatsoever. Is
>> the head badge on these bikes any sign of their quality? For instance
>> the word "Windsor" printed vertically down the head tube versus just
>> the initial "W" mean anything? Is that what they did to seperate the
>> identification between the Pro and Competition from the lower end
>> models? Also I am in dier need of a serial number log somewhere to
>> help more in identification of these bikes. Thanks
>>
>>
>> Jim Abt
>> Wausau, Wi. USA