Motobecane La Redoute Road Bike.

[Ian Raleigh]

Hi all, I am george, coming from corsica, 48,and i just bought from a former motobécane staff member a la redoute-motobécane frame. I m building this frame with relevant equipement from the 80's. If interested, i can post pictures.

Go for it George

 

[dutchie]

For me a project already for 2017 is another team replica of Motobecane (or MBK as it was called later on). The team replica for the ADR-Fangio-IOC-MBK team of 1987. I am already picking parts.

 

[mikestr]

Hi Olavi,

I can only add that the only difference to the real team bike and the Equip Pro' frame is that the La Redoute Team frame has...

Cinelli bottom bracket.
Columbus sloping fork crown.
Brazed on front mech.

The Equipe Pro' doesn't.

These bikes are so rare :shock: and finding info' is so hard.

Ian.

I hope Ian still follows this forum all these years later. I wanted to say that the actual situation with these T.O.L. Motobecane is a little more complicated, at least in France. If you look at a French ad or catalog (a 1983 French edition survives), you can see that the top model was called the "SP" or Special Pro. In the 1982-84 models years the color was this the familiar dark metallic blue. But customers could order painted rear stays instead of chrome, and different components. Were these customized bikes still considered La Redoute replicas? I doubt it. At the same time, I've seen some team replicas that bore an "Equipe Pro" label, even in the same year that the C5, a model one step down, also carried this name. Very confusing. As for the front derailleur braze-on, this was not always a feature of the team replica bikes; they came along at a certain point--1983? Cinelli BB shells were used for two or three years. Perhaps they were still used in 1984, but I have not seen a confirmed 1984 team replica.

Finally, here is a counter-example to consider, my 1984-ish SP. It is completely original except for the brake hoods (since replaced with brown gum units) and cables (casing now silver-gray). It has: braze-on FD tab, sloping fork crown with embossed "M," all-Columbus SL, every single component listed for the "SP" or "Team Champion," down to the special Christophe Competition toe straps with alloy buckles. The rare Stronglight 701BB with titanium axle. Yet--the BB shell is not Cinelli, and the dropouts are Huret not Simplex, and the rear stays are painted. The pedals are Spidel 700 CXC platform type--also not shown in the catalog but seen elsewhere and in races at that time. I know the provenance of this bike and know that it was delivered this way. The "customer" was a Motobecane employee; this was a gift from the company.

I don't know if this bike was a one-off or simply typical of the last SPs made as MBK (Yamaha) was taking over. By then, most French race bikes had, like my bike, Vitus plastic cable guides affixed to non-Cinelli BB shells, and Simplex dropouts were being replaced in production by Vitus or Huret because of failures of their rear dropouts (cracking), so perhaps Moto was merely following the trend.

Maybe someone knows more about this?