New member - can you help identify this mixte?

[chrisdinsdaler]

Hi - New member here and looking forward to receiving the accumulated wisdom of the forum and passing a little on if possible!
I wonder if anyone can help with this bike that my wife has just acquired? It seems quite unusual in that it is a single top tube mixte and came from France to England a couple of years ago. The components on it are quite old, round about 1970s I think, although the hubs and possibly the frame might be older?

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It has Huret 'Success' deraileur, Stronglight model 93? chainset, mafac 'racer' centre pull brakes, Pelissier front hub and mavic rim, Atom rear hub and Mavic rim, a Course Belri handlebar stem and a Henri Gauthier seat.
The frame is light and could well be Vitus 172 tubes as it weighs about the same as my Claud Butler Regent which has Reynolds 531 tubing and it has some quite nice lugs. The curved lug on the top of the seat tube is quite nice, I think.
I can find no numbers on the frame and suspect that it has been refurbished and repainted at some point as I don't think Special Competition was a make as such. The stickers look rather generic to me. If any one has any clues they would be most appreciated. It has stamped dropouts with no marks that I can see. After much searching on the web the nearest I could get to it were a couple of Rene Herse machines and a Gaidou, both of which differed slightly in some details.

Sorry for the number of images but thought they might help with identification. The black paint makes it quite difficult to photograph.

Thanks in anticipation.
Chris

 

[cchris2lou]

no idea what it is but it is very nice . Rener Herse are generally build with his own components .

 

[bduc61]

Re:

seems to be a decent frame but not a herse though !

even if much rarer than in the 50's , this elegant frame style was built until the beginning of the 70's but quite seldom seen in this guise of twin stays and one down/top tube only at that time - the vitus sticker is probably right and it sports nice mechs - rather upmarket machine I would say.

here is one I got which looks rather similar - has a Paris shop tag but difficult to know the framebuilder - mine is in Durifort tubing and I upgraded the crankset to a TA one with bash but mechs are much more common on mine.

The fork looks very similar betwenn yours and mine

By the way, is yours a 650B wheeled one or 700C ?

 

[chrisdinsdaler]

That's great - thanks very much. Your machine's frame looks pretty much identical to ours from what I can see. The chrome looks nice, too.
Ours has 700c tubular wheels on it. Not sure if they are original though as the front hub is a Pelissier and the other an Atom.
What does the transfer say on the front - is that the shop name you were referring to?
If you have any more pictures of it that you don't mind posting up we'd love to see them.

 

[bduc61]

Re:

sorry
don't have much pics at the moment - here are some
chrome is unfortunately in very average condition

I actually bought the bike because I like these framestyle but also because I lived in the same street as the shop on the front sticker ! ( yes its the one that can be seen on the pics) which was existing probably until the mid seventies and was at a corner with the avenue de la grande armee close to the arc de triomphe in Paris .

 

[chrisdinsdaler]

Re:

Thanks for the pictures. Your bike does seem to be very similar in the frame construction - it even has the same goldy/brown lining on the lugs. Would it be unusual that one would be made of Durifort tube and the other from Vitus 172 or were the companies part of the same group but with different brands?
I wonder who the frame maker was? Would there have been a lot of small frame makers constructing unnamed frames for sale through bike shops? Would the bikes have been 'bespoke' in that they would be made for a particular customer or were they just stock bikes made on 'spec'? It would be very interesting to find out more about the bike scene in France then.
I like the luggage rack on the front of your bike and I notice the handlebar grips are the same as ours too!
I like that you bought your bike from the local bike shop in your street and that it could well have been made locally too.
Cheers
Chris

 

[bduc61]

Re:

Frankly, I believe that at the time , a lot of shops were actually only sourcing frames with bigger outfits and buying parts to complete the bike. This shop in a quite posh area near the "arc de Triomphe" was most probably in that vein.
It is therefore very difficult to guess who could have been the framemaker

Bespoke frames from upmarket "names" would generally be much more expensive, better finished and possibly signed with specific signs or recognizable building details; Its not really the case with these both frames

front luggage rack is a Specialites TA one which is pretty frequent coupled with these Mafac centerpull brakes.
can be found on ebay :idea:

 

[chrisdinsdaler]

Re:

Thanks - that's very helpful. I'm doing a little work to get the bike useable again including changing to some clincher wheels I found cheaply (Maillard hubs with Weinmann rims) and putting on some mudguards.
The front rack looks very nice on yours and I shall look out for one.
The story behind our bike is that it was bought a few years ago from a house sale in the south of France near Cazals and was reputedly owned by Paco Rabanne the fashion designer who has a house nearby. From this I had assumed it was locally made but I guess, as he also has lived in Paris, he could have bought the bike there, from a shop in an upmarket neighbourhood(!), and later took it south.
No evidence for this apart from the sellers word but a nice story which my wife chooses to believe as she is a textile designer and Paco is something of an icon for her!

 

[bduc61]

Re:

to distract you , a few other mixte frames in the garage

the first being a double drumbrake frame of great workmanship - unfortunately no certainty of the framemaker
Maybe a Pitard , a wellknown french maker - What is striking is that what I thought to be a fillet brazed frame is actually an " autogene" welding one , which incidentally is much harder to master to arrive to that welding quality.
Probably from the mid to late 1940's







the second is a Bazou - a framemaker from Lyon - chrome is unfortunately in poor condition but the workmanship is also quite visible. probably beginning to mid 1950's

 

[chrisdinsdaler]

Very interesting pics - thank you. They are lovely frames - I didn't realise the single top tube mixte type frame was so popular in France and so early too.
I do remember a lovely chrome framed racing bike I saw at a brocante near Chartres a few years ago that I would have bought but couldn't fit into the car - don't know what it was but I wish I'd found space for it.
I'll post a picture of our bike this week when I've finished putting on mudguards and wheels and a rack on the back for my wife's commute to the station.
Chris