Sunday 7 December 2014

Flandria - winter dreaming



Flandria - one of the hallowed names of cycling!
While out and about in London last weekend, I spotted a Flandria.
"A what?"

A Flandria.
This is a Flandria, shown here with a "proper" Raleigh mixte.
A Flandria, shown here with a Raleigh mixte
Classic designs - the drop-handlebar Flandria and the roadster
Raleigh mixte
Flandria and Raleigh -
is that a well worn Brooks saddle on the Raleigh?
OK, schmOK.
So a blast from the past.

Flandria is linked with Merckx, Maertens, Kelly, and many, many other great riders, all of whom donned the Flandria "team" colours.

But more than that - they still make bikes.

They of course make modern carbon-fibre racing frames, and thick-tubed Aluminium training frames, but they also still make "proper" bikes - in this case with proper steel tubing!

I give you the Flandria Columbus SL Niobium Road:
Flandia Columbus SL Niobium Road
(pic from Flandria website)



Made, as you might have guessed, from Columbus SL Niobium tubing, with a Columbus steel fork, too, the frame weighs in at a claimed 1.8 kg for a 56cm model, including paint and chrome.
Hand made in Belgium (hey, a bike not made in the Far East, with a couple of stickers stuck on it in America!), the frameset will cost you just £1299 (that's about $2100) plus shipping.
Sounds pricey, but when you comapre it with a hand made bike like the Roberts I featured recently, it looks about right - cheap, even, given the racing heritage of Flandria!
The Spa Cycles machine I featured last time has a "made in the Far-East" frameset, even though it uses decent Reynolds steel, so if you want to have your bike made in a high-wage country, you have to pay the price for that!

proper hand-made attention to detail

proper lugs!

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