Gazelle Champion Mondial Semi Race ... my favorite Gazelle

[grantoury]

This doesn't sound right. Total frame output regardless of model could be 15408 frames - everything from kids bikes, city bikes, utility bikes.

There could have been number ranges reserved for the lightweights, not necessarily filled. While I get Gazelle were and still are big, and offered a good complete range these numbers do seem high. The CM was definitely popular.

I can't image many Stayers would have been sold - max 50 per year?

The numbers were for the race department only, from 1974 onward. But I agree it doesn't sound right.

In the graph, in 1979 they made 10000 bikes more than the preceding year. That is just too much, for a racing division.

The man behind the website got these figures from a man who worked at Gazelle and took them out of the archive.

 

[grantoury]

Does the peak not correspond to the bike boom in the USA as well?

US bikeboom was 1965-1975 according to wikipedia.

 

[grantoury]

Interesting bit of history. I am not sure this is reflected in Gazelle serial numbers though. And serial numbers are not sales figures. I think the numbers are only part of the story.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/...bikeology-americas-forgotten-1970s-cycle-boom

 

[Woz]

You can imagine what would have been needed in terms of workforce additional manufacturing plants etc. to grow a lightweight bike division for that output. Wondering if those numbers are including any company acquisitions?

The peak is about the same time period for the French bike industry too. As you say; serial numbers are for traceability, and not necessarily sequential representing the output. The true figures would have been with the accounts department.

 

[grantoury]

Apparently brackets were numbered in batches and put in a storage bin. Usually serial numbers correspond with specs of the right year (like mine), but there are cases where a 1977 bicycle has a 1967 serial number, for instance.

 

[KermitGKona88]

https://www.retrobike.co.uk/threads/carradice-saddlebags-simplex-gear-levers.444065/

 

[vcballbat]

Here is a graph. It shows that there was a peak around 1979. Other years show a much more modest output. The 70s bike boom in Europe was from 1973 onward. And there was something called the Zoetemelk effect. When he won de TdF in 1980 a lot of Dutch people went out and bought a road bike. But it doesn't really show here. Maker of the graph thinks Raleigh profited from that effect more.

View attachment 692950

Both Raleigh, Gazelle and also Reynolds were owned by Ti ...Tube Investments with some of the Dutch market Raleigh's built at the Gazelle plant

 

[Guinessisgoodforyou]

That bag is nice.

 

[KermitGKona88]

Enough being sensible...

 

[Guinessisgoodforyou]

Is it safe..