Seeing Red In The Gray Before The Neon: 1983 Miyata 310

You know the '80's were, like, totally, about big hair and leg warmers.  Yeah, totally.  And neon.  Neon, totally.  The '80's were just awesome!

All right.  I didn't talk like that in the '80's.  Even though I was, like, young enough.  

That is the '80's everybody seems to remember.  Or, at least, that's the stereotype of the decade.  You had to love it, though.  In what other decade could The Cosby Show and Miami Vice have made their debuts during the same week?

Those '80's really began, I think, around 1984.  Before then, during the early part of the decade, the '70's were hanging on:  Men were wearing ridiculous moustaches and even more ridiculous sport coats and ties, and young women could be seen in butterscotch-colored leather jackets and boots.  But leisure suits were gone--thankfully!--along with men getting perms.  

And--something else for which I'm thankful--some very, very tasteful and functional bikes were being made.  In 1983, while I was working at Highland Park Cyclery (before I embarked on life as a New York City messenger), it seemed that every bike manufacturer--at least the ones whose bikes I assembled and we sold--offered at least one model in charcoal gray with red highlights--whether the decals or transfers, head tube, seat tube panels or bands, or some combination thereof.  The red really was a highlight:  It accented the understated nature of the gray finish rather than called attention to itself, as the red-white-and-black blocks and and bands on every other new bike sold today seem to do.

That year, I assembled bikes from Panasonic, Motobecane, Trek, Miyata, Peugeot and Ross--the latter's "Signature" series as well as their cheaper bikes.  I saw red and gray in every one of those brands' gray bikes.  But I didn't get tired of it:  Those bikes all seemed tastefully finished, especially this one:

The 1983 Miyata 310 was--is-- a very nice bike.  I think they, along with Panasonic, made some of the best mass-market bikes I've ever seen.  Their lugwork was on par with all but the small builders.  Their component choices always seemed to be made with function and value in mind:  lower- and mid-priced alloy parts from Shimano, SunTour, Dia Compe, Sugino, KKT, MKS and the like.  And, of course, SR Laprade seatposts.

It seemed that every bike and component maker had a product or line called "signature".  I know, it was a marketing gimmick, but it was pretty inoffensive, I think, compared to some that I've seen since.

Shmano made derailleurs with the "arrow" you see.  This version, as far as I know, was made only for the Miyata 310 and a couple of other manufacturers' models:  The derailleur was usually finished in silver and the arrow was gold-toned.  Shimano didn't call them "arrow"; they just had some boring numerical designation.  Nobody--not even the Shimano sales rep who came to our shop--seemed to know what, if anything, the arrow meant.

Sarcasm aside, seeing the bike reminded me--in good ways--of what bikes used to be:  nice lugged frames and components that had real functionality.  Today you have to go to small builders like Mercian or Royal H to get new bikes like them.

I wish that Miyata weren't locked up behind a fence:  I would've liked to have taken better photos.  I hope that I still managed to give you a taste of what people could buy off a showroom floor in the moment before reason and taste vacated much of the bike industry.

Note: There's one thing I don't like about the 310:  the shift levers.  But they're forgivable on a bike that has so much else going for it!

Tour Green: Sean Kelly

Believe it or not, this was the jersey of a French cycling team.



So why does it look more like the flag of Ireland--or, at least, the way such a flag might look if it were designed by an Ulsterman?

The Sem-France Loire team raced from 1980 until 1983.  Directeur sportif Jean de Gribaldy formed it by taking the French part of the Belgian Flandria-Ca-Va Seul-Senair (Try saying that three times fast) team after Flandria withdrew its sponsorship.   The team was originally called Puch-Sem-Campagnolo, but de Gribaldy re-christened it Sem France-Loire in 1981, when Sem became the main sponsor.

In the squad's first year, it was captained by Joaquim Agostinho, a Portuguese cyclist who finished fifth in the Tour de France that year.  But in the summer of 1981, a certain racer who started his professional career on the Flandria team several years earlier contacted his former directeur sportif--de Gribaldy--about joining his new team.

DeGribaldy got the necessary sponsorship and signed said cyclist.  Once you know who he is, it will make--in an ironic sort of way--perfect sense that he wore the jersey in the picture.

I am talking, of course, about someone who would become of the most prominent racers of the 1980's--and one of the most successful Irish riders ever:  Sean Kelly.

With Sem, Kelly rejoined some of his former teammates, including Eddy Planckaert.  With such a strong cast, the team cast a shadow far longer than one might have expected from their small budget.  Their riders accounted for several important victories, such as the French road race championship of 1981, the Swiss Cyclo-Cross championship of the same year, as the Paris-Camembert in 1981, Paris-Nice in 1982 and Liege-Bastogne-Liege in 1983.  And, in 1983, Kelly would win the Tour de Suisse for the Sem team's last major victory.

The following year, power-tool manufacturer Skil became the main sponsor. Sem-France Loire then morphed into the Skil_sem team.  And Kelly went on to bigger and better things.  Although he never won the Tour de France outright, he took--appropriately enough--its maillot vert in 1982, 1983, 1985 and 1989.

What Happened To Lyotard, SunTour And All Of Those Other Little Companies That Made Nice, Practical Stuff?

The posts I wrote about Lyotard pedals and clipless pedal designs that have come and gone got me to thinking about a way in which the bicycle world has changed during my nearly four decades as a dedicated rider.

I first started to take longer rides and made some commitment to training during the later part of the '70's Bike Boom.  At that time, about the only bike makers (at least, those with any pretentions of quality) most Americans heard of were Schwinn and Raleigh.  As big as those companies were, to call either of them the General Motors of cycling would have been preposterous:  Schwinn's sales peaked at 1.5 million bikes in 1974, about the same number of cars from just one division of GM--Oldsmobile--that were sold in the same year.  And, of course, the sale of a car generates a far more revenue than the sale of a bike.

Other bicycle and component manufacturers--like Lyotard--were far smaller in scale.  They usually made their products for local markets:  Relatively few bike makers sold their wares much beyond the region, let alone the nation, in which they manufactured.  Most, especially in Europe and Japan, were still owned and operated by members of the families that founded them.  In fact, a few founders were still alive at that time.



What that meant was that most Americans had never heard of them.  Perhaps even more to the point, it meant that even though there was a wide network of races, tours and other bike-related events, they were much smaller in terms of both participation and money than today's events.   So, it didn't take as much money to sponsor a team or rider as it does (both in absolute and relative terms) today.  Small and medium-sized bike companies as well as businesses in other industries (think of Molteni) could get in on the action.  

It also meant that bike and component makers, like other small businesses, were risk-averse.  What I didn't realize when I started riding was that the designs for most bikes and parts (one notable exception being SunTour derailleurs and shifters) available at that time were already decades old.  Some actually worked well and were durable; if you used them, you learned to put up with their idiosyncracies or shortcomings.  Then again, if you hadn't used anything else, you didn't think they were idiosyncracies and shortcomings.

Most of the Lyotard pedals were examples of what I'm talking about. Now, I don't think they were deficient, but I don't think Lyotard had come out with a new pedal design since World War II, or not much later.  Even the Campagnolo Nuovo/Super Record parts were really just refinements of the Gran Sport products that made their first appearance during the early 1950's.



Around the mid-1980s, things started to change.  It might be fair to say that the ground shifted with Tullio Campagnolo's death in 1983.  His heirs discontinued the Nuovo and Super Record stuff Eddy Mercx, Bernard Hinault and others rode to victory.  In their stead came C-Record (actually, Record-Corsa or Record-C) parts.  Some, I'll admit, were quite lovely.  But none of them was really a functional improvement over its predecessors; in fact, some parts, like the "Delta" brake, were clearly not as good.

Other companies started to "innovate"--or, more precisely, create new novelties.  Designs became--or, at least looked--more and more radical every year.  To be fair, some new designs had legitimate purposes, at least for certain riders.  But too much of what was coming on the market every year was mere gadgetry:  stuff for the sorts of people who felt they simply had to have the newest and latest in everything.

In other words, the world of cycling was shifting from one that was guided by cyclists and riding to one driven by consumers and the marketplace.  That, in turn, turned the bike industry from a mosaic of relatively small companies to a pie cut into a few large slices by bigger companies.  Smaller companies, which didn't have the money or other resources to devote to research and development (or, very often, didn't see the need for such things) simply couldn't compete.  They, like SunTour and Lyotard, fell by the wayside or, like Sedis, Wolber and Super Champion, were absorbed by larger corporations, some of which had no previous involvement in the bicycle industry.  Even Mavic was bought by Salomon, which in turn was taken over by Adidas.  It could be argued that these turns of events enabled Mavic to develop the innovative (There's that word again!) rims and wheels that allowed it to retain its leading role in the 1990s and well into the 2000s.

Part of the pressure to create new things (or simply repackage old ones) also came from the ways in which the world of cycling events was changing during the 1980's.  By the time Greg LeMond won his first Tour de France, companies like Molteni (or mid-sized bicycle makers) were no longer sponsoring teams.  Corporations with much larger budgets were taking that on, and race sponsors included the likes of Coca-Cola and Nike.





Naturally, when companies put up money for riders and teams, they want a return on their investment.  So, the stakes became higher.  One benefit, at least for elite cyclists, was that the amount of prize money grew and the sport gained greater exposure outside of its traditional strongholds.  A downside was that it became more difficult for teams and riders with little or no money to compete, and smaller races and rallies became even smaller or disappeared altogether.


So, while 90 percent of the 1970s peloton were riding Reynolds or Columbus-tubed frames with Campagnolo components--all of which had been developed decades earlier--riders by the late '80s were astride newly-developed (and far more expensive) bikes with never-before-seen frame configurations and aerodynamic components made from exotic materials.  

It's easy to understand why racing-team sponsors would want their riders on the newest and most innovative equipment.  A race that takes hours or days but won by seconds (or fractions thereof) could well be decided by those extra few grams off the wheels or a frame or other part that's more aerodynamic.  And, as in any professional sport, there is really not as much difference as one might expect between the best and the rest of the peloton as there is between anyone who's in the peloton and anyone who isn't.  




That point is lost on club riders with lots of money and vivid fantasies.  They want to ride whatever's being ridden in the peloton.  If they didn't have such equipment, they seem to believe, younger and better-conditioned riders will make them look like the out-of-shape and not-so-young riders they actually were. Of course, those young and poor riders either get better or get better equipment, and the riders with bigger wallets and stomachs (I should talk, right?) want "better" equipment.

And so the world and industry went from being, essentially, a village of mom-and-pop enterprises that responded to cyclists' needs to an economy increasingly dominated by corporations that profit from anxieties they create in consumers.



  

Bicycle Safety Camp Rap Video (Priceless!)

Ah, yes, the 1980s.  What was not to love?  (Well, except that Reagan and Bush pere were President.)  "Power suits" with padded shoulders.  Ghostbusters. (The best English-language translation of Caesar's declaration of victory is reason alone to see the movie!) Televangelists.  Miami Vice.  Neon-colored ski wear.  Trashdance, I mean, Flashdance.  Jolt cola. 
 

And in the world of cycling we had...fade paint jobs. And the Campagnolo Stinkro system.  

And Shimano took over the world.

As for music...The decade gave us the worst song in the history of rock'n'roll--and the best old-school rap.

Let me tell ya, tho'---The Sugar Hill gang and The Beastie Boys had nothing on these kids!