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Walter Nash

There is an '84 Criterium for sale that is said to have been painted by Trek. Respray? Did Trek paint any Gitanes coming to the US?

verktyg

There was a loose relationship between Trek and Gitane in the early to mid 80s.

Trek started importing Gitanes ~1983 and distributed them through a separate company, Cycles de France, Inc.

http://gitaneusa.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1772&highlight=trek

John Thompson occasionally posts on the Forum. He worked for Trek back then.

I'd heard that Trek did some warranty repairs on Gitane frames. They may have even brought in some bare painted frames, applied decals to them and assembled the bikes??? Confused

Gitane West did that in the mid 70s. There may have been a customs duty advantage to that.

I bought a 1984 Super Corsa frame on eBay back at the beginning of 2007. It had some strange decals that I replaced with some decals from Cyclomondo.

verktyg

I guess that this is the frame that forum member Walter Nash inquired about:

http://tinyurl.com/nyt76e8

Lemond Replica? NOT EVEN CLOSE!

As heart breaker, myth buster, protector of history and the "truth", this frame just doesn't look right!

For starters, it's probably a 1983 or earlier frame of indeterminate model.

Back then, Gitane used Super Vitus 971 tubing and some Super Vitus 980. They didn't start using Super Vitus 983 until 1984.

The seat stay tops are swaged as on pre 1974 frames.

During Lemond's era all of the Gitane Pro Team frames had fast back seat stays.

Starting in 1984 the top 4 Gitane models (Criterium, Tour de France, Super Corsa and Team Pro) came with fast back stays.

Also most replica frames had number tabs under the top tubes!

I'm always suspicious when I see a frame or bike with a missing or mismatched fork. What happened to the original forks?

Also, those decals look like ones from the mid to late 1980s not 1983.

From the 1960s until the black, white and yellow paint themes of the late 80s Gitane Team bikes were always metallic blue paint like on the Team Pro pictured above.

Walter Nash

[quote="verktyg"]: "I'm always suspicious when I see a frame or bike with a missing or mismatched fork."

That fork was very troubling to even my untrained eye. Thanks for the input.

Walter Nash

verktyg,

Can you contact me off discussion group. My pm's are apparently not going out to you. I have some questions on a LeMond era Gitane frame or bike.

Thanks.

Walter Nash
wbnash (at) msn (dot) com