Chicago Al 

Tonight I took a leisurely cruise through the searchable archives at bikelist.org, especially the classic rendezvous mailing list. Looking under 'Motobecane Grand Record' I came upon LOTS of posts referring to the bike as one that the posters owned, or used to own and missed, or wished they could afford when they were younger. The black/red/gold GR was frequently mentioned as a favorite or classic color scheme and model. And several compared the GR to the Peugeot PX-10; though the latter was full 531 while the GR was '3 Main Tubes' up to '76 or so, the GR was arguably better equipped with NR. There were also several comments that the Motobecanes had a better level of finish as far as paint, lug filing, etc than French makes like Peugeot and Gitane, which were much bigger names in the early years of the boom. There was at least one mention of an early 70s GR, a yellow one I think, having a problem with the clear coat deteriorating!

Apparently Motobecane entered the US market late; they were a much smaller outfit than Peugeot, which was an industrial powerhouse. The importer was Ben Lawee, who also imported Bianchi for some years, and Follis, and I think other lesser names. Lawee also developed some marques made for him in Italy and elsewhere, like Italvega. Later he turned to Japan with Univega. Several guys on the CR list had been in the bike industry at the time, one had even worked with Lawee I believe, and they attested to his genius for marketing, for choosing popular colors and graphics, and for mixing and matching components to hit just the right price points. For example the GR has Campy drive components but Weinmann brakes. I got the impression that it might have been Lawee who got Motobecane to start using Japanese components, as they were doing with Nitto bars as early as 1974.

By the way, this is probably obvious to everyone but me, but the Grand Record was named for the Record derailleurs...three guesses what the Grand Jubile was named for.