A 50's or early 60's Colnago would be VERY interesting to some of us. Many
of our mental pictures of classic bikes are fixed at the time that these
bikes first were imported to the US--say, from 1967 to 1973? The
evolutionary steps leading up to these import bikes are what would be the
missing part of the story. I for one would like to see a bike made by Albert
Eisentraut before his Velo Sport tenure in the early 70's, the older the
better.
Eisentraut really set a style example that many American builders copied
parts of--and that it appears many Asian and Italian bikes showed parts of
later!
David Feldman
Vancouver, WA
> Richard Sachs wrote:
>
> i have some pics in a 1971 zine showing a pre-clover
> colnago head tube decal. i'll assume the pic was at
> least a year old at that point.
> e-RICHIE
> Richard Sachs Cycles
> No.9, North Main Street
>
>
> **********
>
> I'm assuming the decals Richard is referring to are the so-called *playing
card* decals that showed up on the first batch of frames VeloSport in
Berkeley brought in in 1969. These graphics are clearly recognizable as a
close relative of the graphics that showed up soon thereafter, the ones we
are most familiar with on early 70s Supers.
>
> However, there is a photo floating around of a 60s Colnago (I saw it in a
book somewhere, but I'll be darned if I can remember where now, Frank
Berto's derailleur book maybe? Or that nice picture book about the Tour de
France whose author escapes me at the moment? One of those, I think), with
a very different graphics set from any I've ever seen in the flesh, almost
cartoon-like (in Mike Kone's words)...it sounds like Johann picked up that
set of graphics. If so, Johann, that is very cool and I would love to see
some pics of them!
>
> Unless my memory is faulty (always a distinct possibility), wasn't Ernesto
making frames under his own name as early as the late 1950s? Now *there'd*
be a cool bike. A 50s Colnago. Or early 60s, anyway.
>
> Charles "can't have too many Colnagos" Andrews
> Los Angeles