gthomson

In my extensive search for a vintage road bike this year I noticed a lot of Bianchi bikes listed which were lower end models, mid 80's, Shimano components, different looking decal even and started to think it looks just like a N. American made Raleigh or Norco bike. Did the company ever contract out to a Canadian or American manufacturer? Example below:

gthomson

Thanks Bianchigirl, not mine actually, just listed on buy & sell. I've seen a number of these bikes all around $300-500 range but they look like any other bike from N. America made in that time.

T-Mar

It's very easy to clone a bicycle. With the exception of some of the larger manufacturers, there were few proprietary components or frame building items. All you had to do was find the manufacture or supplier for the frame items.

Raleigh Canada manufactured primarily for Canadian marketing brands such as Supercycle (Canadian Tire) and Glider (Eaton's), besides their eponymous brand. Norco used various Asian sources. During the 1980s and earl 1990s, these included Dodsun, Fairly, Kawamura, Miki and Yamaguchi. I have yet to come across any cases where Bianchi were sourced from Raleigh Canada or Norco's suppliers.

In the 1980s and and early 1990s, Bianchi had at least three non-Italian sources, one in Japan and two in Taiwan. The one unidentified Japanese source was also used my Miele, Shogun, Specialized and Takara. One of the Taiwanese sources was also used by GT, Jamis and Team Chance.

Every so often, the manufacturer would slip up and you find a customized part, such as a Bianchi engraved dropout on a Miele.

After the early 1970s bicycle boom, bicycle design got progressively more formulaic. In order to stay competitive in a shrinking market, the international, mass volume brands cut out independent distributors and set up their own sales divisions. The designers hired by these divisions started tailoring designs to local preferences just like the marketing brands. There was also offloading to less expensive sources, first in Japan, ten in Taiwan. The local offices tended to design to whatever sold well the previous year. As a result, bicycles started losing their nationalistic flavours and everything tended to evolve a Universal American Bicycle for the various price points. Every so often, there would be a maverick, like Grant Peterson at Bridgestone, but for the most part, they were pretty much interchangeable, with the graphics being the big differentiator, though even that tended to follow trends.

When a 1980+ bicycle loses it's head badge decals, unless it has some engraved parts like a crown or stay caps, it's often hard to identify as so many of the brands used the same manufacturer and many of those manufacturers used the same, tubing, lugs, fork crowns, BB shells, etc. Even the designs of the off-the-shelf frame building bits and components gradually lost their variety, evolving (some might say devolving) to fewer selections, favoured by designers and consumers. A substantial number of the threads on the forum relate to identification of nondescript frames and bicycles. It's easy to be led down the wrong path due to similarities.

gthomson

T-Mar wow T-Mar you know a ton of bike history. I think you are in the Toronto area if I'm not mistaken? do you do any historical presentations or anything? I would be interesting in learning more.

T-Mar

Sorry, while I am Canadian (cue the old Molson's beer commercials) I'm not in the GTA. My in-laws are in the Oshawa region and I typically visit St.Catherines/Welland one to three times a year for national and international rowing regattas but everything was cancelled this year, so I haven't been in the Golden Horseshoe region for just over a year. If there's anything specific you want to know but don't want to start a thread, you can always send me a private message.

randyjawa 

What about the Paggio line. Were those imported or assembled or built in the USA?

T-Mar

Piaggio was an Italian company that owned Bianchi during the early 1980s and was best known for their Vespa scooter brand. In the USA, Vespa of America Corp. was the Bianchi distributor during this era. Circa 1985, Bianchi USA was established. The Piaggio era Bianchi sold in the USA and Canada appear to have come from either Bianchi or a single, unidentified Japanese manufacturer. There were no other sources for the North American market or North American based assembly or manufacture, as far as I'm aware. There are only two serial number formats for the hundreds of early 1980s Bianchi serial numbers that I've collected. The Taiwanese sources were added in the late 1980s.