cooker

Hi, folks...I recently acquired a Raleigh Century and I assume it's too recent a model to ask about in the Classic and Vintage forum, so I wonder if anyone here knows about this model? I can't find any mention of it anywhere online including the Raleigh company site and the Raleigh pages maintained by Sheldon Brown. The Raleigh company's centenary was in 1987, so I wonder if it dates from that era? It's a heavy brute and it is distinguished by having a Brooks B72 seat, which is one reason why I bought it.
Thanks
Robert

jeff williams

https://www.firstflightbikes.com/raleigh.htm

Darrincars

I just came across a red Raleigh Century. Just kind of a cool old cruiser with 18 speeds. Chrome wheels a little rusty but the body is in excellent condition. Really cool embossed fork.
Bill

cooker

The original Raleigh Company in Britain was founded in 1885, and was the world's leading bike manufacturer in the 1950s and 1960s, but they crashed and burned when they stuck to building steel bikes in England while their rivals built cheaper aluminum bikes in Asia. Starting in the 1980s there were a series of takeovers and reorganizations and licensing out of the name, and any Raleigh bikes built after that, were produced by large conglomerates that might own multiple brand names. So the Raleigh Centurys we have seen are probably just ordinary bikes with no special link to history.

Someone stole the front wheel off mine, so I built a stand for the fork and mounted the rear wheel on a bike trainer in the back yard that my son wanted to train on, but he lost interest and it's still out there several years later! I suppose I should check if it is salvageable and donateable. I did put the Brooks saddle on another bike and got some use out of it, although it had sagged a bit by the time I bought the bike and it eventually was wrecked.