I was using the word "steal" lightly. But making the existing design, whic h was essentially identical between Ideale and Brooks, in titanium seems to have been something which Ideale did more than 20 years before Brooks. An d it is probably not as obvious as it seems, since there were probably some who thought a Ti frame needed different dimensions from steel. But Ideale apparently made it work, and while I had not been aware of the Ideale Ti s addle until this past weekend, no doubt the Brooks designers of the Swift w ere. So clearly the Brooks design was not really an innovation, but simply copying something a competitor had done decades before.
One wonders why the Ti Ideale is so little known today, and indeed I don't remember it getting a lot of notice In The Day. Perhaps the time was simpl y not right, as the newer plastic saddles were in vogue, and traditional le ather saddles were coming to be thought of a old fashioned, Ti rails or not . As we have seen from this past thread, a Ti railed leather saddle can be made about the same weight as a plastic saddle with steel rails, but not m uch lighter. And I would imagine that, Ti still being pretty exotic in 197 7, the Ti Ideale was quite expensive, probably several times more than a Ci nelli Unicanitor of the same weight. So maybe Brooks just waited until a m arket for leather saddles had been established again, this time more of a n iche market, and one that they thought would support a high priced "luxury" product.
Regards,
Jerry Moos
Big Spring, Texas, USA
> From: David Benson <bensondoc@yahoo.com.au>
> Subject: Re: [CR] On Topic Ti railed Ideale
> To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org, "Ken Wehrenberg" <wnwires@htc.net>, j
errymoos@sbcglobal.net
> Date: Sunday, February 15, 2009, 10:44 PM
> Brooks did not steal Ideale's design, they simply made
> their existing design in titanium as Ideale had done 20
> years earlier.
> Did Merlin Metalworks copy Speedwell?
>
> David Benson
> Auckland, NZ
>
> http://retroride.blogspot.com
>
> --- On Mon, 16/2/09, Jerome & Elizabeth Moos
> <jerrymoos@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> From: Jerome & Elizabeth Moos
> <jerrymoos@sbcglobal.net>
> Subject: Re: [CR] On Topic Ti railed Ideale
> To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org, "Ken
> Wehrenberg" <wnwires@htc.net>
> Received: Monday, 16 February, 2009, 4:02 PM
>
> That's the beauty of this list. Until this thread I
> didn't know a Ti railed leather Ideale ever existed,
> although I'd seen a Ti rail 2000 series plastic Ideale
> on eBay. This gets my vote as the coolest saddle ever, and
> unless someone comes up with a Ti Brooks older than the
> Swift, this has to predate the Brooks Ti saddles by more
> than two decades. And they had in 1977 or ealier the same
> design Brooks use now - that is a leather saddle on which
> one takes the established design for the steel frame and
> simply produces it in titanium. This kind of puts the
> Brooks Ti saddles in a different light. Rather than some
> great innovation, Brooks simply stole a 20+ year old Ideale
> design. Of course I still like the Brooks Ti saddles,
> except I've managed to accumulate several of them
> without ever paying the recent absurb retail prices. I
> guess you could say at least Brooks cared enough to only
> steal the very best.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jerry Moos
> Big Spring, Texas, USA
>
>
>
> --- On Sun, 2/15/09, Ken Wehrenberg <wnwires@htc.net>
> wrote:
>
> > From: Ken Wehrenberg <wnwires@htc.net>
> > Subject: Re: [CR] On Topic Ti railed Ideale
> > To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
> > Date: Sunday, February 15, 2009, 8:29 PM
> > Peter Kohler added:
> >
> > I have an Ideale 90 with titanium undercarriage on my
> > Gilles Berthoud. It
> > most certainly is well within the CR timeframe,
> Peugeot
> > lists it as an
> > option for the PY-10CP in their 1979 catalogue and I
> > suspect it probably was
> > introduced c. 1977.
> >
> > Peter and Jerry,
> >
> > I remember seeing ads in LeCycle in the early '80s
> for
> > Ti-railed models. They predated those Columbia
> shuttle
> > models by quite a few years. I could probably track
> down a
> > date and issue for you if I had a full-time CR stuff
> > secretary.
> >
> > "not enough hours..."
> >
> > Ken Wehrenberg, Hermann, MO
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
> >
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