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tb
Heldring
(sorry for the bad photo, I'll try to take some better ones soon)
Vittorio is a Dutch bicycle brand from Alkmaar, the Netherlands. Jan Groot started the brand at the end of the 50's. All Vittorio frames were built in-house. The name was supposed to inspire Italian allure, supposedly named after the Italian movie star Vittorio De Sica. In 1965, Jan's son Frank, who's also a mechanic for the national track team, starts working for the brand. Slowly the brand starts to move away from classic racing bikes towards more touring, long-distance cycling and tandem frames, although Frank would still continue make racing- and time trial bikes for professional athletes from time to time.
I found this frame through Marktplaats were I have e-mail notifications set for 'Vittorio', mainly because I was interested in acquiring a nice touring frame for a soft price. When I got the notification for this frame I immediately put in a bid which I thought was more than fair, but not too high, it could probably go for more. Luckily the seller agreed to sell it to me as long as we could meet and I could hand over cash. I couldn't let this go so a deal was quickly struck. The guy acquired it from a sale when Vittorio moved from Alkmaar to Heerhugowaard in 1994 and never got around to building it. He thought it was a show frame, only built up, but never actually ridden that much.
The frame is built with Columbus Air tubing and also includes the proprietary seat post, which is really rare. I'm not sure if the fork is also Air because most Air forks have a different fork crown. The lugs have small custom cutouts. Front and rear dropouts are Campagnolo. Both the bottom bracket shell and the fork crown have 'Vittorio' pantographs. All cable routing is done externally. There's mounts for one bottle and a race number. The paint is red with gold accents and a light 'gold dust' finish and is fully chromed underneath. Unfortunately the paint has drooped a bit during the drying process which surprised me a little.