WTF are these drop-bar bikes?!?

[DoctorRad]

This North Face advert just turned up on my Facebook feed… can anyone ID the bikes from these photos? Do we reckon mountain bikes with aftermarket drops, or…?

 

[retrobikeguy]

Forks look pottsy

 

[CassetteHoarder]

Another photo from a different angle.

 

[Fatal Swan]

Ah, those carefree days when you would ride sharp rocky terrain (no track) along the top of a breezy canyon on the drops of a bike a couple of sizes too big - wearing a flower, though no helmet

 

[ThePrivateer]

These must be the oldest gravel bike pictures I have yet seen - they even came with flared bars - and proper gravel

 

[Betsy]

No No!.. You need to think about this from a marketing perspective.. the granular size of that^ surface according to the Udden-Wentworth grain scale would be too large to be considered gravel.. so these bikes can't be gravel bikes, they need be recognised as an entirely new marketable catagory of off-road bicycle with a new set of standards. A cobble would be considered as being between 64–256mm .. which would make them cobble-bikes, capable of riding loose surfaces between 64–256 millimeters.

You heard it here first people!

 

[Dave_Mars]

The bikes are different. One has shot-in stays , the other has top eyes. The forks are also a unicrown and a lugged crown

 

[24pouces]

The girl’s bike got some first generation Shimano cantilever. Seems to be 1983-85 bikes.
Cyclo muletier bikes ?

 

[24pouces]

For the man, seems to be a Steve Potts type II fork. Wheels are not so big. So, only mountain bikes with 26” but with drop bars

 

[averagebiker]

No No!.. You need to think about this from a marketing perspective.. the granular size of that^ surface according to the Udden-Wentworth grain scale would be too large to be considered gravel.. so these bikes can't be gravel bikes, they need be recognised as an entirely new marketable catagory of off-road bicycle with a new set of standards. A cobble would be considered as being between 64–256mm .. which would make them cobble-bikes, capable of riding loose surfaces between 64–256 millimeters.

You heard it here first people!

Close, but i think you will find theses are the once lusted after "scree" bikes that got left behind by ATB bikes. ...........that git left behind by MTBs........ad infinitum lol