Is this Saracen the First UK MTB?

[one-eyed_jim]

By mid 1984 Blumels were claiming in their Saracen adverts that they were "the best selling mountain bikes in Britain". By December they were also claiming that they made "The only British-made mountain bike to be sold in the USA and Canada". It is sadly unlikely that a hand built framebuilder like Bob Jackson could have produced this level of output.

Do you know what such a figure might be? The British MTB market was still very much in its infancy in 1984, and dominated by small manufacturers and a few expensive imports. It's not hard for me to believe that Saracen might have been the market leader at that time, and of course such claims are hard to disprove, but how many sales would that have taken?

As for the export line, that could also be a matter of one or two US dealers. Certainly, Mercian were big enough to have US dealers in the seventies and eighties, and Jackson isn't a smaller outfit.

As for the Raleigh Maverick, I have recieved information from a collector who specialises in early British mountain bikes, that he has an early Maverick that is labelled as "Made in Japan".

[snip]

The Raleigh "Special Products Division" at Ilkeston, produced hand built mountain bikes from at least August 1985 when they puplisised the "Midnight Express" made by Gerald O'Donovan for Tim Gartside. They made bikes for a variety of uses. Some later examples may well have been branded as Mavericks.

I'm not disputing that some - or even most - Mavericks were imported, but my father's 531 model is certainly British made, and almost certainly as early as the identically-equipped Japanese example in the 1985 review you posted. As far as I can see, there isn't any evidence that the RSP Mavericks came any later than the Japanese imports.

 

[GrahamJohnWallace]

Hi Northernlight,

Blumels, the company that owned Saracen at the time, claimed that Saracen were: "THE FIRST AND THE BEST".

The first to mass-produce mountain bikes in Britain maybe? Though Dawes were also early to the party with their Dawes' Ranger. Dawes had previously rejected Geoff Apps' Cleland design as early as 1979. At that time they couldn't see the point/potential of cycling off-road. Geoff recons the reason why the Dawes' Ranger had such long chainstays is that Dawes copied a framebuilders mistake from the first Cleland prototype.

The Saracen ATB was designed by Gary Smith at F.W. Evans who simply copied an original Ritchey bike. In 1984 I hired a F.W Evans version in order to test ride it. I still have the hire docket, the frame number was 0001. :shock: Now that would be a historic bike to own. :shock:

 

[GrahamJohnWallace]

Hi one-eyed_jim

The only UK sales figure I can come up with is 100,000 bikes sold in 1988. But by this time demand was outstriping the supply of mountain bikes in Britain.

Below are Geoff Apps' recollections about Saracen.

"Saracen:
They were first built by a company somewhere (I think) in the West Midlands. It was run by an individual and his wife (Name escapes me). When Blumels experienced a teriffic surge in sales of their MTB mudguards, they went on a spending spree, buying up quite a few companies, including Saracen. However, Blumels overstretched themselves and quite quickly went bust. The Stanforth Brothers snapped the Saracen company up, and are to be admired for the way they have stuck with the company".

I would assume the "teriffic surge in sales of their MTB mudguards" must have been in the US and before 1984?

 

[legrandefromage]

I had a 'Greyhound City 5' in 1985. This was a bull bar 'Meteorlite' tubed 5 spd fat tire thing that was about £169 as a 13th birthday pressie

 

[chaser]

This is a really interesting read as I am just building a retro modern Saracen myself... good to know all the history behind the brand.

For decals try gil_m on here, he is THE decal man extrodinaire

I would love to see a restoration story on this piece of heritage.

Thanks for sharing with us..

Cheers,

Chaser.

 

[one-eyed_jim]

The only UK sales figure I can come up with is 100,000 bikes sold in 1988. But by this time demand was outstriping the supply of mountain bikes in Britain.

That's an interesting figure, but if UK mtb sales in 1983 were counted in the hundreds, it seems more likely that 1984 figures might have been in the low thousands at best. Tony Hadland notes that "a review of the UK cycling scene in the International Cycling Guide 1983 made no mention of [mountain biking]"

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~hadland/raleigh.htm

I would assume the "teriffic surge in sales of their MTB mudguards" must have been in the US and before 1984?

It's hard to imagine a spending spree based on sales of MTB mudguards - never a mainstream component - well before the boom really hit. According to a Bikebiz article available online, SKS bought Bluemels in 1983. Something doesn't quite add up.

 

[MikeD]

The only UK sales figure I can come up with is 100,000 bikes sold in 1988.

Is that meant to be all MTBs? Or just Saracen? I'm not sure I believe it either way ;-)

 

[Northernlight]

Thanks for all the replies, its great to find out the history of MTB's in the UK!

The question now is, presuming the bike is very rare, should it be left as is, or carefully restored?

 

[Dr S]

As for the Raleigh Maverick, I have recieved information from a collector who specialises in early British mountain bikes, that he has an early Maverick that is labelled as "Made in Japan". The story is that Raliegh initialy underestimated the strength of the UK market and it was quicker to re-badge bikes from the far east than set up their own production lines here. My source said "I understand it the bike is effectively a re-badged Rockhopper." Raleigh were desperate to get into the growing mtb market and this was a quick but temporary fix

I think the Maverick pre dates the Rockhopper by a few years. Would be interesting to compare pics though. did the Maverick have a BMX sized BB shell too or was that just the Mustang?

Si

 

[GrahamJohnWallace]

Putting the British mountain bike boom in context....

At the start of the 80's in Britain:
*socially, riding a bike meant that you probably couldn't afford a car (unless you wore cycling clothes to show that you were a racing cyclist in training)
*most people expected to pay less than £100 pounds for a bike

The mountain bike changed all this. For adults, riding mountain bike was now cool. Even though most people never ventured from their local city streets, like the Range Rover cars, mountain bikes represented the spirit and possibility of adventure, however remote.

1981: If you want a mountain bike you need to either build your own or bring one back from America.

1982: You could have Cleland Cycles build you a bespoke off-road bike for £430.

1983: You could now buy an American style mountain bike in the UK. However, it had to be a far-eastern made Ridgeback imported by Errol Drew of Madison/Freewheel catalogue & Beta Bikes. At the end of the year a handful of Ritchey’s were imported and appeared in a variety of London bike shops.

1984: The race really started with home grown Ritchey copies bikes being produced by Saracen(FW Evans), Dawes, Eclipse, Overbury's, Condor, Elswick-Falcon, Roberts Cycles Swallow and Bob Jackson. They were imports from Specialized, Kuwahara, Peugeot, Diamond Back, Pro-Lite Geko, Gitane, Bolten, Motobecane, Ammaco, Hutch, GT, Mongoose, etc. Not to mention the British owned Muddy Fox company. Also English Cycles made a version of Geoff Apps' Cleland design. (I suspect that despite the choice on offer, most of these brands sold relatively few bikes).

1988: 100,000 mountain bikes sold in the UK. So about half the bikes sold in Britain this year were mountain bikes.

1990/91: The phenomenal sales of mountain Britain peaks and then begins to drop away.