Originally Posted by
Salamandrine
Cool. I knew when I typed that that someone would find some one off exception somewhere. I hadn't seen that Fred DeLong bike before. Pretty neat.
It wouldn't surprise me if there were a couple other custom frames out there with sloping top tubes, but these would have been like a one in a million thing.
I got Fred's book as a Christmas gift in '74 and found the idea of a sloping top tube quite astounding. I have always wondered just how much that bike may have influenced the later builders. There is also the idea of simultaneous invention, though, where two people, faced with similar needs, will come up with a similar solution.
Fred seems to have wanted a properly sized frame for his height (he was quite tall) but also wanted easy on and off and stand-over. Later, mountain bike builders recognized the need to stand over the bike when the terrain below the bike night be quite uneven. The sloping top tube is a common solution.