Originally Posted by
RobbieTunes
I've never seen an '86. I owned an '85, which was also Prestige, with chromed fork crown and feet, chromed seat stay caps, R chain stay, and dropouts. It had the elder font, and was an elegant beauty, in dark grey metallic with burgundy shading on "hollow" lettering in the joined font.
It came with DA 2x6 indexed, and was DA front-rear, including BB and hubs. The seller offered it to me, complete, for $800, as he planned to part out the entire bike. He did, as I only bought f/f/hs, then put tricolor on it.
It was a 54cm, and I overcompensated for the perceived "short" frame with a too-long stem and kissed it goodbye because "I couldn't get use to it."
I think about how that would have looked with a set of polished tubular rims laced to those same hubs, with the OEM DA 7400 group. Sitting next to my Comp TA with polished Superbe Pro. Yep, I'm a dumb-ass. Red Foreman would have kicked me into oblivion.
I'm not sure how I'd have liked the lavender/pearl 1986 model, as I was sort of hung up on the chrome and elegance that died out on the '84/'85 models across the board.
The picture in the catalog of the 85 prestige looks(to me) like a dark teal green/blue and silver combo. That would have been a really nice looking bike. It was kind of a letdown when I found out it was Anthracite and Silver. I can't tell if the 86 had a chrome fork or not. I do like the 85 decals more.