Classic & Vintage - not a bianchi?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7191673102&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWA%3AIT&rd=1

maybe it's just not the original fork? i'm not sure if bianchi ever made butted forks like that. a buddy of mine thinks he's seen them before, but isn't positive.

any help would be appreciated.

I can't say I know a lot about these bikes, but I had a vintage Bianchi. I know that in the 80s (and 70s?) that some Bianchi's were built in Japan as well. Sort of a lower class of Bianchi. Mine was Japanese. However the dropouts had Bianchi stamped right on them. It may have been older than this one, but the lack of shifter mounts on the down tubes I would take to mean it is fairly old. Nice frame though, my size even. To bad I just bought 2 other frames.

This is (pretty sure) a Japanese contract-built Bianchi. Guessing at the fork crown it looks like a Tange mass-produced fork: many JP builders opted to source the forks pre-made from Tange cause they were good and cheap. I will guess even more and say that the builder might be Miyata judging from the fluted stays, and that's not a bad thing...depends on the quality of tubing/price this bike was back in it's day. Just some trivia: the Piaggio sticker just refers to the parent company of Bianchi back then ('80s), they also owned Vespa and other "heavy industries", it doesn't mean "made in Italy". I reckon that the JP Bianchis were in general better than the Taiwan offerings that came later as cheaper-labor came to mean Formosa and not Nihon. I have seen several JP Bianchis and many more Italian ones and at least one of the JPs impressed me as very high (metallic pink paint, no less!) in quality and I think would ride about as nicely as the middle-high-end Italian steel. This blue one seems a tad lower grade than that one, but I wouldn't sniff at it if the price is right.

SunTour GT horizontal rear dropouts

I don't see them using these in Italy?