Pre 1950s rides of LFGSS: old bikes, vintage rats, classic lightweights

Anquetil still riding (and winning) on simplex push rod in 1961! I’m sure the pills helped.

Sorry this should be a reply to Absurdbird.

The reluctance of Simplex to abandon their pull chain design is an excellent example of French conservatism combined with rejection of ideas seen as 'foreign'. Their adherence to the Priority to the Right rule at road junctions is similar - but it's a rule that's so compromised with exceptions that it makes even less sense than it did originally. It's also strange that when Simplex finally did produce a parallelogram mech, they messed it up with Delrin. They shot themselves in the foot just at the wrong time and were unable to resist the Japanese challenge, so whatever dope Maitre Jacques took was effectively wasted so far as the French bike trade was concerned.

What I would like to know is: how good or bad was the Juy 60, which I think was the final development. In the advertising drawings (Rebour) they certainly look as though they would be better than the earlier versions, not least because they look robust enough to survive the bike falling over on its right hand side. I have the impression it was a disaster from the sales point of view - even though I was riding* when they came onto the market, the first one I actually saw was a couple of years ago at a Ripley jumble. Hilary Stone had two of them - he wanted £300 each which, considering the rarity, I suppose wasn't completely unreasonable. Interestingly Hilary told me they had been worth even more a few years before, but someone had turned up a little treasure trove of them, which had flooded the rather limited market.

*N.B. I was very young at the time!