Performance frame made by Ritchie?

[jrp]

I recently picked an old Perfromance frame from a friend. It has an 853 sticker and he claims that the Performance frames were made by Ritchie that year, 1995.
I do remember Performance used to make frames, but I thought they were all pretty low end. Did they make an 853 frame? And anyone know who built their frames back then?
Thanks, jrp

[Nessism]

I don't think Ritchey made their own frames other than a very small number made by the man himself.

[Scooper]

Are we talking about Tom Ritchey, someone named Ritchie, or someone named Richey? ;)

[Nessism]

Are we talking about Tom Ritchey, someone named Ritchie, or someone named Richey? ;)

Oops. :rolleyes: Fixed the spelling. :p

[redtires]

I recently picked an old Perfromance frame from a friend. It has an 853 sticker and he claims that the Performance frames were made by Ritchie that year, 1995.
I do remember Performance used to make frames, but I thought they were all pretty low end. Did they make an 853 frame? And anyone know who built their frames back then?
Thanks, jrp

Yes, Performance did have a couple of years when they were selling an 853 frame, and they weren't really "low-end" per se. For the price, they were actually pretty descent frames. I was managing the Boulder, Co. Perf service department back when they started selling the 853's and none of them were made by Ritchey to my knowledge. They may have been made by the same factory (all were from Taiwan) that made some of the tig welded Ritchey frames, but to my knowledge an actual tig frame has never been made at the hands of Tom Ritchey. All of his "out of shop" stuff is/was either lugged or fillet brazed. Performance has always had kind of an oddball line-up of bikes over the decades when it came to their "high-end" store brand stuff. Years ago they had a Perf branded SR (just like Vitus and Alan's) road bike, and have sold some actually very nice lugged steel bikes in the past. One of my favorites was an older model (late 80's) that was full Superbe Pro and dressed in a very attractive medium metallic red and tastefully done decals. They even had a pretty nice Ti frame for a few years in the 90's, but they didn't sell super well, and by the end you could have one out of the store for something like $400 for a 3/2.5 Ti frame and nice Kinesis aluminum fork.

[jrp]

thanks for the info!

[zephyr]

My oldest bike frame is a 1979 or 1980 Ciocc Mocba with Columbus SL tubing and lugs, sold in the Performance mail order catalogs in 1981. Seems that the Italian bike company Ciocc built a whole bunch of road racing frames for various Eastern European cycling teams that were used in the 1980 Moscow Olympics, which were boycotted by the US and many western nations due the invasion of Afghanistan by the USSR. All their plans to sell a bunch of these same frames to western consumers fell through, so they unloaded the leftover frames to Performance. Performance put their own decal on the bike, but there is no doubt it was a Ciocc Mocba. I paid somewhere around $250 for this frame that included a Campy super record headset. I still ride this bike several times a month, it has lots of original parts from that era including Supurbe pro brakes. It's a true classic, a wonderful road bike.