I owned a Lejeune when they were a popular bike in Southern Cal @ 1972-74.
When you looked up close, there were never two identical bikes--lugs,
crowns, small frame finishing details, but they all had about an acre of
decal per frame!
David Feldman
Vancouver, WA
> > According to a particular report I read by Fred
> > DeLong regarding his visit to LeJeune in Paris,
> > said he observed only lower quality models being
> > being produced in-house.
> Dale,
> Was that a report from Fred DeLong or Fred Rednor - which
> is to say me! If it was mine, it actually said that no frames
> at all were being produced at the facility, although they
> were painting and assembling low-end and mid-level bikes.
> Below, is a reply I sent to Mike off-list. It's basically
> a summary of the report I posted to the list sometime last
> year.
> Best regards,
> Fred Rednor - Arlington, Virginia
> ---------------------------------------
> Mike,
> I'm repying off-list because this will be far from a
> definitive answer. I was at the factory some time after
> your frame was built (i.e. during 1983). I'm not certain
> that "factory" is necessarily the correct term as no frames
> whatsoever were being produced there. They were being built
> elsewhere by contract builders but were painted and assembled
> at the LeJeune facility in Maisons-Alfort. This was true for
> bikes of every quality level. They did have a large wheel
> building facility, though, with several automatic spoking
> machines and even a few human wheel builders.
> Anyway, it was my impression that frames were NEVER
> produced on-site; that they always had been produced for
> LeJeune by contract builders or custom ateliers for the
> team frames. After all, Mr. LeJeune was an ex-racer and
> not a real industrialist.
> I spoke with Marcel LeJeune about the frame building but
> my French wasn't so great at the time so I may have missed
> some of the subtleties of his answer but it was clear, as
> I mentioned above, that all frames were produced elsewhere.
> Best regards,
> Fred Rednor
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Greetings - send holiday greetings for Easter, Passover
> http://greetings.yahoo.com/
> _______________________________________________
_________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com