Classic & Vintage - History of Masi in the 80's

Does anyone have a reliable history of Masi during the 1980's. I bought a Nouva Strada in 1985. Although it say's Made In Italy, I've been told they were made in California and simply used the Italy decals. I've also been told it was made in Italy and the California operation was shut down. With such a rich history why has Masi fallen out of favor. I've visited their website and looked at their bikes, but it seems, since the 80's Masi has been a minor player in the industry. Note: when I bought the bike "back in the day" the front deraillure braze on was so misaligned it had to be sent back. The second bike was stamped 54cm but no matter how you messured, it was nowhere near 54cm. Took 10 years before I figured this out.

There is a former Massi employee on the classic rendevouz forum. Very good people on that list.

Masi's since the mid-80's ain't what the old ones were. Today, it's just another brand name being pimped.

You may want to contact Jim Cunningham, a former California Masi painter, at CyclArt.com. He rides a beautiful (and tall!) silver 1976 Masi Gran Criterium.

try:

www.bates-lee.com/masi/html/home.html

and

www.bikelist.org

Type Masi in the archives search engine at the bikelist.org site and you will get more Masi info than you ever wanted.

Cheers :)

Mayo,
I think you'll like this article by Maynard Hershon.
Steve Moore

http://www.planetultra.com/maynard/masi.html

Oh...and it's also the bike ridden by Dave Stoller in Breaking Away. :D

Hey.. smoore beat me to it, first time I have heard of them was from that movie. Picked it up at a Walmart for $14, I think you can now get it online for $10

Jay

From the web:

The film Breaking Away was about a group of Indiana townies who enter the annual Little 500 bike race at Indiana University, actor Dennis Christopher rode a 1978 Masi GranCriterium. ‘‘It floats over small bumps... as if the bike is barely touching the ground.’’

The following is from Tom Schwoegler, who was the technical adviser on the 1977 movie "Breaking Away."

"We purchased 2 Masi's from Faliero (or was it Alberto... the one who was building in California at the time). We also had 2 extra forks. One fork was bent to simulate the wreck when the pump is put in the front wheel. I bent the fork and it was not easy. We also had a Sears Free Spirit painted and hand decaled to look like a Masi. We had to hand-paint the decals because Masi would not give us an extra set. The Sears bike was mounted on a special platform for the close shots of Dennis Christopher. You can tell if he is on the Sear bike because it had Weinmann brakes and the brake cable came down on the opposite side when compared to the Campy brakes.

Both Masi's returned to California after the film was shot. Steve Tesich ended up with one of them (he was the one who insisted on getting Masi's for Dave and Colnago's for the Italian Team. We only had to buy 2 Colanago's as two of the guys who played those riders already had Colnago's (one of the guys was Christian VanDeVelde's dad, John). I still have one of those bikes, a gift from Director Peter Yates and the other was sold to a friend of mine in Indianapolis who later sold it. I also ended up with the bent fork from the "wrecked" Masi." – Tom Schwoegler

From an email from Jim Cunningham:

I was close to Masi USA when those bikes were produced. I don‚t know
the builder, but they were produced in Italy, to a lower price point. A
high percentage of the frames had quality control issues; most with
alignment. Much of the inventory was dumped to Euro Asia who blew them
out at $75 each.

If the bike works for you enjoy it. Maybe you got a good one!

One more from Bikelist.org courtesy of Classic Rendezvous.
It is an e-mail to the owner of CR and to the list.
I in no way had anything to do with this, other than cut and paste. :D


My name is Ted Kirkbride. I have been continuously involved with the
Masi bicycle company since the Masi name was purchased in the early
70's. There have been been only 3 owners of the Masi trademark.
Faliero Masi of course, Roland Sahm who purchased the trademark when
Faliero moved his company to the United States and finally I am the
current owner. At the very beginning of the sale of the trademark, in
1972, I was a consultant for Roland Sahm for the establishment of a
frame building operation in the United States. I worked at the very
start with Faliero in setting up the Carlsbad operation. The original
intention was to train American frame builders but it soon became
apparent that this could not be achieved in a short time frame. So, we
brought 3 Italian frame builders who had built for Masi in Italy. After
the factory was up and running, the only Italian builder who stayed in
the US was Mario Confente. One of the first major innovations that
came out of our U. S. frame shop was the fully investment cast lugs. We
sent Mario to Microfusione in Italy to have our original idea of
investment cast lugs made. The Italian company, Microfusione, was not
able to produce the lugs without the help of its US licensee who had
the expertise to produce the thin walled technology. Mario advised that
the lugs not be made in Italy since the ideas would most likely be
copied by other Italian companies. His prediction soon came true as our
$80,000 investment in developing the tooling to produce the lugs was
soon being used by other major Italian manufacturers. We were the
first company to put into production the fully investment cast lugged
tubed frame. Our pioneering efforts soon became the industry
standard. In 1975, Mario Confente went out on his own to build his
bicycles under his own name. In 1979, Mario Confente asked to come back
and work for Masi. In the process of setting up his shop with us, he
passed away. In fact, the morning Mario died of a massive heart attack
he was scheduled to meet Rene Moser, the general manager of Masi at the
time, to go pick up a new granite surface plate. Back to 1976. In this
year, Mike howard built frames and Brian Baylis painted the Masi frames.

It was in 1977 that the Carlsbad factory began a transfer to the San
Marcos, California facility. During that time Albert Eisentraut built
about 50 frames to fill a gap during our move. Keith Lippy became a
principal frame builder from 1977 to 1978. Rob Roberson also built our
frames during this time. One of the special bikes that we made during
this time required several pairs of forks. This of course was the now
famous bike ridden in the Oscar Nominated Movie Breaking Away. In 1978,
I took full control of Masi frame building. Jim Allen took charge of
the painting operation. Also in 1978, Dave Moulton and I became the
main frame builders. It was around 1984/1985 that Joe Stark replaced
Moulton as one of the principal builders. I continued to build special
team frames and oversee that the qualities and traditions of the Masi
frames were maintained. During the mid 1980s, I became the owner of
the Masi trademark. This is just a brief history of Masi USA frame
building. The information on your page regarding serial numbers while
some of it is correct the majority of the information is erroneous. On
our web site, www.masibikes.com, we intend to produce more details and
we will keep you posted.

With regard to the Italian Masi page. I would like to clear up a few
errors. First of all, there were no "nefarious business dealings" on
our part in acquiring the Masi trademark. Faliero Masi was paid
$175,000 for the trademark, plus he was paid a salary to oversee the
running of the operation and a royalty for every frame that was made.
In today's dollars that would probably be a million dollar deal. In
fact, the nefarious business dealings came from Italy. During the final
negotiations for the trademark deal with Faliero Masi, Alberto Masi
tried to prevent the deal by claiming the trademark as his own. In the
end, the deal was a huge compensation for all the years of hard work
Faliero put in to building a reputation that we here in the United
States have done well to live up to. Finally, with regard to the
Lokoshinx (correct spelling) team that rode our bikes to World and
Olympic gold medals, it was I who specially built their bikes not Masi
Italy.

I hope this information is helpful in your efforts to keep accurate
information about classic bicycles. In the future, I'd be happy to
verify any information regarding Masi bicycles built since 1973. Thank
you very much.

Regards,
Ted Kirkbride

Mayonnaise,
From the above it seems your bike would have been built by Joe Starck
at Masi Calif. If you want to contact him I have access to his e-mail
address PM me. He can probably tell where the bike was built.

Marty

Mayo,
Neat..where did you find that info from Mr. Schwoegler? I love inside stuff like this. Any other releated info? I wonder if they had to teach Dennis Christopher to ride? I loved that flic...I was once that age AND my Dad was a car salesman.... :rolleyes: Ha!
Steve

From an email from Jim Cunningham:

I was close to Masi USA when those bikes were produced. I don‚t know
the builder, but they were produced in Italy, to a lower price point. A
high percentage of the frames had quality control issues; most with
alignment. Much of the inventory was dumped to Euro Asia who blew them
out at $75 each.

If the bike works for you enjoy it. Maybe you got a good one!

To my recollection, it was one, and only one small batch of frames in '84 or '85 that were accepted by EuroAsia for resale; I don't know if these were sold as Masis though, and they certainly weren't painted by Jim Allen. For all years to follow though, a proper Nuova Strada frame and fork came from Italy chromed, yet unpainted, and all these frames were quality-checked complete before paint. So, for all years of production of the real Masi Nuova Strada, distributed by Masi and Masi distributors, including Ten Speed Drive and Torreli -- during the time I worked for Masi, from '84 to '90 -- these frames held no kinship to those few Cunningham speaks of.

To my recollection, it was one, and only one small batch of frames in '84 or '85 that were accepted by EuroAsia for resale; I don't know if these were sold as Masis though, and they certainly weren't painted by Jim Allen. For all years to follow though, a proper Nuova Strada frame and fork came from Italy chromed, yet unpainted, and all these frames were quality-checked complete before paint. So, for all years of production of the real Masi Nuova Strada, distributed by Masi and Masi distributors, including Ten Speed Drive and Torreli -- during the time I worked for Masi, from '84 to '90 -- these frames held no kinship to those few Cunningham speaks of.

Do the Bob Hovey web pages cover this Masi time frame? I know he's done a huge amount of research on Masi, and has several ways of estimating the dates and sourcing of frames.

Road Fan

Do the Bob Hovey web pages cover this Masi time frame? I know he's done a huge amount of research on Masi, and has several ways of estimating the dates and sourcing of frames.

Road Fan

Very generally, yes. Bob doesn't list them in the serial number registry, though. They receive brief mention in a couple of the articles, but fall outside Bob's main areas of Masi interest.