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| Flandria - one of the hallowed names of cycling! |
"A what?"
A Flandria.
This is a Flandria, shown here with a "proper" Raleigh mixte.
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| A Flandria, shown here with a Raleigh mixte |
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| Classic designs - the drop-handlebar Flandria and the roadster Raleigh mixte |
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| Flandria and Raleigh - is that a well worn Brooks saddle on the Raleigh? |
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:
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| 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!
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| proper hand-made attention to detail |
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| proper lugs! |
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