>At the Bonhams auction in February in Paris a
>number of advertising cars developed for the
>Tour de France were offered for auction.
>Here is a link to one of them, which will get you to the auction listing.
>http://www.bonhams.com/cgi-bin/public.sh/pubweb/publicSite.r?sContinent=E
UR&screen=lotdetailsNoFlash&iSaleItemNoB02706&iSaleNo043&iSaleSec
tionNo=2
I saw the TdF advertising cars in Paris at Retromobile. They were huge hulking devices pop-riveted from aluminum sheet and covered with papier maché (or so it looked). They resembled carnival floats. Their connection to cycling is about as tenuous as that of TV ads that interrupt classic Hitchcock movies. You pay to go to a movie theater so you don't have to watch the ads. The Tour de France is free, so you have to watch the ads roll by. That doesn't mean you need to glorify them. (There was a nice Citroen Traction Avant, unmolested except for some really cool graphics for Miko ice cream.)
What I find far more fascinating are the interactions between car designers and bike builders. In Italy, the Cisitalias were the first cars to have spaceframes because the owner of the company, Piero (?) Dusio, had a bicycle factory, and they had lots of tubing lying around. Making a jig and welding up tubing was easier than having a pressed-steel chassis tooled up. (Or were the Cisitalias brazed? The one I saw did NOT have lugs, that much is sure!) However, I don't see any indication that in return, Italian bicycles were influenced by engineers like Dante Giacosa or Vittorio Jano. Otherwise, cup-and-cone bottom brackets would not have lasted into the 1980s... (Nothing wrong with them, but they basically are 1800s technology and cartridge bearings were used in most other applications starting in the 1930s.)
In France, cycling, and especially cyclotouring, saw many more interactions with the car world.
The two Reyhand women's bikes in Bicycle Quarterly Vol. 5, No. 1 came from a rich industrialist whose factory made all the springs for Renault cars and Berliet trucks. His daughter said that in addition to nice cars, he loved nice bikes, and he used to go and discuss with Reiss at the Reyhand shop all the time. (Imagine a top-of-the-line Peter Weigle for your wife and daughter, so they can carry their poodles on a rear rack and ride into town to go shopping.)
Ettore Bugatti built a bike in the 1910s with four top and down tubes, which wasn't much good. In the 1930s, he had learned a lot (perhaps also during his stint at the Breguet aircraft factory during and after World War I). He is said to have suggested the double triangulation for tandems that still makes the best tandems today. (It's too labor-intensive, so few builders use it.)
Louis Delage, who built perhaps the most innovative racing cars in the 1920s, bought a Camille Daudon cyclotouring bike (similar to the one in our book "The Golden Age of Handbuilt Bicycles") in the 1940s and wrote that it was the most marvellous piece of mechanical equipment he ever owned.
Roland Csuka, who made the Alex Singer frames, worked at Citroën and perhaps Renault during the 1950s and 1960s when there was little demand for bicycles.
René Herse did not come from cars, but from aircraft. He worked on the prototype Breguet aircraft that was the first to cross the Atlantic the hard way, East to West, against the prevailing winds of the jet stream. I wonder whether some of the similarities in detail solutions (screws with built-in washers) between Herse bikes and Bugatti cars really come from Breguet, where both men worked (albeit not together, Herse was there a few years after Bugatti.)
It's no coincidence that both Herse and Singer had their shops in Levallois-Perret, where all the racing car manufacturers and body shops, etc., were located. Whether Citroen, Hispano-Suiza, Delage, Figoni & Falaschi, Chapron and many small shops, they all were within 5 miles of each other on the edge of Paris. There were machine shops, foundries, platers and other workshops all over that part of town, making it easy to find somebody to subcontract parts such as special BB spindles or custom cantilever brakes.
Does anybody know of similar influences of cars on bicycles in Britain or Italy? The Bentley Boys don't seem to have had much interest in bicycles... Perhaps they could have learned from cycle makers how to make sturdy machines that don't weigh two tons! (Nothing against vintage Bentleys, there are marvellous machines.)
Jan Heine
Editor
Bicycle Quarterly
140 Lakeside Ave #C
Seattle WA 98122
http://www.vintagebicyclepress.com
>David Cooper
>Chicago, IL
>
>
>On Mar 28, 2009, at 10:23 AM, Dave Porter wrote:
>
>>There are quite a few "vintage" team cars on Facebook photo sites. Start
>>with the Bill Woodul fan club
>>DaveP
>>
>>frogeye@porterscustom.com
>>
>>Porter Customs 2909 Arno NE
>>Albuquerque, NM USA 87107
>>505-352-1378
>>1954 BN2 1959 AN5
>>Porter Custom Bicycles
>>
>>cars:
>>www.britishcarforum.com/portercustoms.html
>>gallery:
>>http://picasaweb.google.com/porterscustombicycles/PorterCustomBicyclesStu
>>ff
>>
>>blog: http://porterbikes.com/
>>
>>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: classicrendezvous-bounces@bikelist.org
>>[mailto:classicrendezvous-bounces@bikelist.org] On Behalf Of Jim Kruse
>>Sent: Saturday, March 28, 2009 9:14 AM
>>To: brianbaylis@juno.com
>>Cc: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
>>Subject: [CR] Bentleys, Bikes and team cars
>>
>>Brian:
>>
>>A few years ago I was lucky enough to be a guest at Donnington Park and
>>had
>>the chance to ride around in a 1920's 4.5 liter Bentley. It was
>>amazing
>>. Nothing like your R-type, but still pretty cool.
>>
>>Maybe Lord March will catch on with the Cars and Bikes bit and a
>>bring a
>>vintage bike racing class to Goodwood sometime. I bet it would be a
>>big
>>hit. And cheaper to ship a bike then a car. When you consider
>>all t
>>he drivers that raced bikes, including, maybe the greatest early
>>American d
>>river, Barney Oldfield, there is a real historical connection. He got
>>hi
>>s start racing bikes on the track.
>>
>>Does anyone have any idea what ever happened to the vintage cycling team
>>su
>>pport cars?
>>They have to be somewhere. Maybe not. Would love some photos of
>>those
>>if anyone has them.
>>
>>Cheers. Jim
>>MenofSteelRacing.com
>>260-409-6822
>>260-672-9113 Fax