Nice pics and comments so far. Interesting discussion about the relative rarity and the ability of contemporary road bikes in the 60s/70s being able to take enough tire to work fine. It seems the UK was much less enthused with specific CX bikes and lagged behind French and the Low Countries in development. Looking at
Cycling covers on eBay it seems that if the event pictured is in the UK the cyclists often have regular center pulls. Elsewhere more cantilevers. Perhaps not the most rigorous observation but something interesting to me.
Originally Posted by
DanBikeFan
I love old cyclocross bikes! I have the rare cyclocross version of the Vitus 787, with cantilever brakes. It's very light, and rides great. Even the violet anodizing was ahead of its time! By modern standards the tire clearance is very limited though, it clears 33mm cyclocross tires, but not much more. I have never seen the ALAN aluminum cyclocross frames in person, but my impression is that they went further than Vitus in modifying the frame, with ovalized top tubes, all cables above the top tube, etc.
Of all the large manufacturers, Gitane consistently made a cyclocross frame for many years, the "country". For at least a couple years they included a brazed-on metal shoulder rest. The frame is all Reynolds 531, with Huret honeycomb dropouts. I covet one of those bikes, but have never seen one in my size (apart from the forbidden fruit of Leboncoin).
Found one of these on pedal room - Wow
Originally Posted by Classtime
Please note: A CX bike is any bike that you use to race CX.
The forced split between MTB/flat bars and "road-style" dropbar bikes is interesting because it illustrates the road/offroad divide in a funny way. Why would anyone use dropbars (and limited to ~33mm tires) unless the rules said so? Makes sense the governing body would want to keep them seperate. More than a few early flat-bar hybrids were designed with CX geometry and ended up as racing machines anyway.
Took me a second to remember but Dave Moulton has some really good posts on mid-century CX in the UK/Europe. Interesting rundown of the small but relevant changes a CX-specific bike might have had back then:
http://davesbikeblog.squarespace.com...clo-cross.html