gitaneusa.com :: View topic

Andy Antipas

Just picked up most of a 1987 TdF from Denver's Craig's List. The frame, fork, seat post, retrofriction shifters, spidel crank, BB, and front der are all that remain from the original bicycle. A PO installed a carbon fork, shimano triple, front, and rear derailleurs. Those will go to the parts box.

lofter

nice score, the spidel crank looks alot like the 107 stronglight version.

Andy Antipas

Yes, same as a 107. First time I have seen this version in the flesh.

trois tubes

Sweet find Andy, love that crankset!

Spidel, Stronglight, Simplex, Mafac, Malliard - all did some cross production/marketing. Simplex also labeled "loop" shifters for Mavic, Edco, and Gipiemme brands.

verktyg

Spidel was a marketing consortium/agreement between a number of French component manufacturers for their top of the line products. The main players were Stronglight, Simplex, Maillard, and Mafac.

It was organized in in the late 70s in response to the lack of complete component gruppos available from any of the French manufacturers.

Shimano and later Suntour plus Campagnolo and some of the other Italian component makers could offer bike manufactures a complete gruppo of matched components. That was a great marketing advantage in terms of product name recognition.

Spidel offered gruppos in name only. Bike manufactures still had to purchase the French components from the individual makers whereas they could place a single order with Shimano, Campy etc. and get a complete gruppo.

The other problem was that the companies selling under the Spidel name could never get it together to offer any kind of matching components like Campy and Shimano.

In the 80s Mavic sold gruppos for several years but then got out of the component business when new owners took over the company.

Some of the early Spidel components were still marked with Stronglight, Simplex, Mafac, Maillard and so on but came in Spidel boxes.

Here's the Stronglight 105bis crank with a plastic Spidel sticker on my 1980 Bertin C37bis bike.

Eventually most of the components (cranks, headsets, hubs, brakes, derailleurs) on Spidel equipped bikes carried the Spidel marque but not always.

Spidel marked products:

Stronglight - Cranks, Headsets

Simplex - Derailleurs, Seatposts

Mafac - Brakes (These were later rebadged Modolo brakes when Mafac went under in the mid 80s)

Maillard - Hubs, Freewheels, Pedals and other items

Here's a Spidel "gruppo" from the early 1980s:

There were several other of these marketing consortiums, Frexa and Tricolor for example. Neither were sucessful outside of France.

Frexa brands:

Huret
Maillard (also sold as part of the Spidel program)
Peyrard
Rigida
Poutrait-Morin
Jeunehomme

scozim

Dang Chas - I really like the look of that 105bis crank. Any idea on the weight? I'm trying to find a lightweight replacement crankset for another project and that 105 looks sweet.

verktyg