Fixed Gear, Fixed Wheel, Fixie, Track Bike, Tarck Bike, Bici da Pista, Pisuto, Pisto, Velo de Piste, Pignon Fixé. No matter what you call it, if the drivetrain is fixed & there's only one gear - we love to ride it like we stole it.
These are very nice. Finnish catalogue scans of the Rossin track bikes from 1989 with original prices in Finnish markka and all. For example the 6350 FIM would be about 1070€ today. I guess the catalogue was made by Tunturi brand who imported Rossin to Finland at the time.
The fact that I very recently scored a lovely track frameset equiped with some original Gipiemme Pista Special parts on it much like the one above makes this an even sweeter find.
The TT bike conversion(?) below is bit funky looking, though. The grey track bike below made with more obscure and apparently slightly heavier Falck tubing appears to be the budget version as the complete bike was priced about two thirds of price of the Columbus SL version. The parts are not exactly the same either.
Le Prince 2011 models have finally arrived and Joonas seems to be busy building them up. Proper promo photos are coming soon, especially The Lady is going to be so nice.
Something new from Le Prince Bicyclette, this time for all the ladieeez out there riding fixed. Black/White and Pink/White, of course, color options available from April, see more here. There really aren't that many ladies' tarck frames out there so big up! Joonas for this.
1.) Cinelli Laser Pista is pure awesomeness and extremely rare, but of course you all know that.
2.) However, the crazy thing here is that there's an old bike shop sticker on the frame indicating that the frame was originally imported from Italy and sold by some long forgotten LBS in Kotka, Finland, of all places. Kotka is a small coastal harbor town in the southeastern Finland and certainly not known as a cycling city. Also there's never been a velodrome or anything like that there.
So who was the shop-owner Mr. Matti A. Salomaa, why did he have a Cinelli Laser Pista in his shop, who originally bought it and rode it, and how it ended up in its current location in Villeneuve le Comte in France?
Also, was this the only one he had or was there maybe more, and is there possibly another one like that hidden somewhere in here? Questions, questions...
In the description in french they pose the questions that since there is a vague number 3 inscribed in the BB shell, could the frame be the third Laser Pista ever made? Also they claim that the mentioned sticker is an address of an Finnish velodrome but that's just wrong. It's the original importer/seller LBS's sticker.
Edit 2.
Ok, turns out kid_scientific was faster than me and contacted the LBS's owner and here's what he said:
The last time the shop had been in contact with Cinelli was in the late 1980s. The frame in question is probably the one that was special ordered via the shop from Cinelli for the Estonian track cyclist Erika Salumäe, who according to Wikipedia "won the first Olympic gold medal for Estonia after the country regained its independence in 1991.
Salumäe won gold medal in track cycling in the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, competing for the USSR team and in the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, competing for Estonia. From 1981 to 1989, she won 10 gold, 3 silver, and 3 bronze medals in the World Championships"
It seems very likely to me that this was the very frame she rode for the ladies gold medal in Seoul in 1988, I mean it's a damn Cinelli Laser Pista so it needs to be the fastest bike there is, right? So now you know.
Two simple riding videos from Finland, above from Oulu in the north (kinda...), below from Helsinki in the south. Both act as of reminders that winter is coming soon, as if anyone needed that...
News of the day: manufacturing of the Jopo, the most classic and loved Finnish single speed bike, will be brought back to the original site in Hanko, Finland from Taiwan. Even the steel used in the frame will be sourced from the Finnish Rautaruukki mills from now on. Bite it, globalization! Too bad the modern re-designed version is ugly as sin.
Also, one of the reasons for this move is, and I quote the Helkama Velox CEO Mr. Jarmo Elamo: "... the need to able to react quickly enough to the changing color trends in the market." All right. Great news nonetheless.
Here's little something I've written about Jopo bikes long time ago:
"Everyone in Finland knows Jopo -bikes because between 1964 and 1975 Helkama company manufactured over 250 000 of them in their factory in Hanko in southwestern Finland. They also manufactured fridges and other stuff but Jopos were always their #1 product.
The name Jopo stands for an abbreviation of 'JOkaisen POlkupyörä', meaning 'EVerybody's BIcycle', and in a this size country basically everyone and their grandmother had one of those. The design of the bike stayed almost the same until the manufacturing stopped in 1975 and today the classic Jopo is considered a modern Finnish industrial design classic.
In fact there were several models besides the standard one, there was an official orange mailman version used by all the mailmen of The Post of Finland, there was Jopo Rodeo, an extra rare chopper-style model, small kiddie-size Jopo called 'Joponen' and larger-sized Iso Jopo, a foldable Jopo Mobil, a Jopomatic with gears and a super rare early bmx-style Jopo Cross. They even had an exercise model for the gym.
The main selling point was that they were affordable, good quality, durable and good to ride. Then of course Jopos became somewhat trendy some years ago and soon after that Helkama company who owns the brand name released a modernized new Jopo, which, just like the new VW Beetle, sucks. On the other hand it has never been difficult to find an old Jopo in Finland even if people are nowadays trying to ask for really outrageous prices for them."
