1971 - Crescent Mark XX

Western Wheel Works in Chicago founded by the german Adolph Schoeninger started to produce Crescent bicycles in 1894 and to make them affordable for working people and widening the market with massive exports. In order to lower prices and to widening the market for massive exports they used production methods in order to lower costs dramatically and were preceding Herny Fords concept of mass production.

 
Export from the United States to Europe generally lowered prices and the so called first bicycle boom was a fact. Especially in Sweden demand and interest in new transportation methods was high and were asking Eli Pettersson and August Lindblad to found Aktiebolaget Amerikansk Cycle Import company in 1896.They started to import those Crescent bicycles from Western Wheel Works and bicycle parts and accessories from other companies and brands.

At some time in between 1907 and 1908 AB Amerikansk Cycleimport started to produce bicycles with the name Crescent at their own.  I do not know how they managed to re-use the well known american brand name, but they did.

In 1910 the company moved to Tunnelgatan 10 and the changed name to Velocipedaktiebolaget Lindblad with Eli Pettersson and August Lindblad going separate ways and Pettersson selling motorcycles from now on.

In 1912 Olympics in Stockholm Henrik Morén and the swedish team won gold with Morén riding a Crescent.

Danish racer Henry Hansen rode to Olympic gold in Amsterdam in 1928 on a Crescent lightweight and became world champion in Copenhagen 1931.

In same year cooperation between Lindblads in Stockholm and Nymans in Uppsala started with mowing production of Crescent and Drott to Nymans Verkstäder in Uppsala. In 1960 Crescent was sold together with Nymans to Monark.

Besides the fact that most of the Crescent lightweights were sold with a model name that consists of numbers they got additional namings. Racer, Helracer, Banracer, VM Racer, Specialracer and Pepita are names that are well known and stand for high perfromance and reliable frames and lightweights.

In addition they are known for their nice adverts of the seventies as shown above.

At the start of the seventies within the third bicycle boom swedish Crescent decided to grow on the US market and produced some very special models especially for the american market.

Unless I was and be searching for a early Pepita, Specialracer or VM Racer I found this lovely 1971 Mark XX frame in eBay

1981 - Jan de Reus

Jan de Reus of Halfweg, Netherlands became champion of the Netherlands amateurs in 1931. In 1933 he switched to a pro career but wasn´t that successful. Thus he ended the pro era and became a frame builder in 1937.

Building frames for Theo Smit made him imperceptibly well known in the Netherlands.. Have been most successful clients is undoubtedly Theo Smit, who always was riding with frames of Jan de Reus, who passed away in 1987. Further on his son Jan de Reus junior took over the manufacture and gained again respect of the cyclist in building very reliable and high performance frames. Unfortunately he became only 55 years old and passed away in 2001 too early.

Actually there is a bicycles shop in Zwanenburg just a stone away from Halfweg where all began. But this shop is owned by former pro cyclist Ron Snijders.

I´ve found this frame supposed to be of 1981 on eBay:

1956 - SUN Soleil d´ Or

I knew nothing about SUN Cycles of Birmingham and so set about searching the internet to find out.

Basically SUN Cycles was part of F. C. Parkes  Cycles in Birmingham and made some classy lightweights from 1930s to late 1950s before they were eventually taken over by Raleigh.

Famous models build by SUN are the Manxman, the Wasp. Some of their better bikes were also sold under the F C Parkes name. Thus the SUN Soleil d´ Or has been sold with very similar components as a F.C. Parkes Cote d´ Or as well. Following an excerpt of the F.C. Parkes catalog of round about 1955.

SUN Cycles addressed more the real racers and sponsored and led definitely a successful racing team around 1953. The catalog of this year reported about it proudly

Reason for starting a search about SUN Cycles was this lovely 1956 Soleil d´ Or I´ve had seen on eBay UK:

1974 - Ko Zielemann Type Special

Besides Gazelle, Joco, Union and Presto one can find really pretty and good lightweights in the Netherlands. One manufacturer of interest is Ko Zielemann, who learned the business from his father, who did his apprentinceship in 1923. Ko started a reasonable career as an amateur rider first and took over the shop of his father later.

With brand name spirit they produced transportation bicycles, but their family name got only the good stuff, that was build for special order only.Thus with Ko Zielemann you will get old craftmanship and high performance. Old riders told me that they called Zielemann the dutch Masi also.

Ko Zielemann ended his career as a framebuilder with very limited words and made an advert in the Bikers Revue: “ Ko stops, tools and bikes on sale”

Some times ago I´ve sourced this lovely frame

1938 - Gloria Garibaldina Extra Corsa

Gloria was founded in 1922 by Alfredo Focesi in Milan and very early introduced those prominent and brand-typical lily lug adornments. 

In 1923 Liberio Ferrario became the very first Italian amateur road world champion riding a Gloria. Today Gloria is known for beeing the first apprenticeship of Ernesto Colnago and for their famous Garibaldina. This excerpt of 1939 catalog shows Garibaldina Extra and Normale

 

Of course I came along a Gloria Garibaldina Extra Corsa.

 Hopefully mine will be looking as beautiful as this one - stay tuned

PS.:


If somebody want to part with Gloria brake levers or does have a spare San Giorgio brake lever he wants to sell I would be very grateful to get dropped a line. Same with appropriate Ambrosio stem with 90 up to 100 mm length. Many thanks in advance. Best regards.

1939 - F.W. Evans Special

F W Evans was an editor of Cycling magazine for a couple of years in the very early 20s before he started his first bike shop in 1922 in Westminster Bridge Road, London.

Very similar to Granby, as recently done research by David Hinds of the Veteran Cycle-Club point out, Evans issued a bicycle desing with his 24 page booklet that explains this new lightweight design (low bottom bracket, brazed up straight and tapered rear stays, 26in wheels and compact frame size) and why it was superior to the old style.

According to those research Granby started building bicycles this way back in 1915 and Evans was the first who published those details and stocked bikes in the new design from builders such as James.




Summing things up F.W. Evans is classified as a pioneer in the use of derailleur gears unsing the Cyclo derailleur gear long before those were imported to the UK and other countries and building geared lightweights with up to 12 gears (triple chainwheel/4-spd freewheel) in the 30´s, owner of some patents of real use to hard riding cyclists, beeing a pioneer in the use of brazed-on fittings and one of the main forces behind the change to the lightweight design of bicycle. Hilary Stones mentioned that Evans build only in very little numbers; therefore the total of F.W. Evans frames, tourers and lightweights is estimated to about 3000 frames during the whole period of the 1930s.


The frame shown was sold with notice that it was dated back to 1948 but due to the fact that F. W. Evans died in 1944 already the frame must be an earlier build. In addition the frame has been renovated back in the 60´s by Holdsworth.

Combination of Major Taylor stem, headset with headclip and oiler, two oilers on BB and the fact that between 1939 and 1945 hardly none lightweight but more likely transportation vehicles and bikes would have been build in UK, I would date it back to 1939 making it a pre war lightweight.

Any and further help in dating this frame is highly appreciated.

Nevertheless this frame might be a good basis for my first renovation using a Sturmey Archer geared rear hub. although I´m collecting, renovating and restoring old lightweights for quite a while it never happend that I stepped into a project that´s looking as created for a Sturmey Archer geared hub. But this one with its rear spacing of 115 mm only is.

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