The Jack Taylor tandems that Jan refers to below were sold by Bud's Bike Shop in Claremont, CA. I personally built up quite a number of them when I worked there. Most might be considered "production" tandems as Bill M cCready would order certain sizes for inventory and test rides, while many were also truly custom. Bud's continued to sell Taylor tandems for quite a while after Santana was founded.
Another 531 tandem was produced by Gitane as an upper range model to the In terclub. Standard guage and diameter tubing, standard Bocama lugs, and small twin lateral tubes made for an extremely whippy frame, albeit very l ight compared to Santana and Taylor. We also sold a few Bob Jackson tand ems with a similar design. Mercian used oversized 531.
I saw and worked on a number of other tandem brands working at Bud's, inc luding, IIRC, at least one Eisentraut.
Cheers,
Mark Ritz
Tandem Geek
Sunny Arcata, CA, USA
>1. I love that Peugeot tandem ad! Were any CR-era PRODUCTION tandems buil
t
>with 531? Or are they all more-or-less gaspipe (like my Moto Interclub)?
>
Often, the quality of the ads is inversely related to the quality of the product, and Peugeot tandems appear to be a case in point. Production tandems with Reynolds 531?
If you count the Jack Taylors that were built for Santana (before it was Santana) - they were made from Reynolds 531. Or were all of those made to order?
I would not be surprised if some French maker offered production tandems with 531 tubing. Delangle offered many high-end production bikes before the war with Reynolds 531 HM tubing, as it was called then - see the wonderful track machine in "The Competition Bicycle." I don't recall whether their catalogue listed a tandem...