Folding Bikes - Canadian Folding bike collection and virtual museum

Hi everyone,
my name is Stephane Lapointe and I am a vintage folding bike collector in Canada. I currently own 21 foldable bicycle from the 60's, 70's and 80's. Have a look at my virtual folding bike museum where you will find thousands of pictures and a detailed description of each bike at http://www.pistescyclables.ca/velos_pliants/index.htm Altough most of the web site is in French the pictures are worth a thousands words.

The collection :
Surpercycle (Raleigh) Twenty 1974, England
Raleigh Stowaway 1981, England
Norco 1988, Canada
Bridgestone Picnica circa 1985, Japan, with 14in wheels
Rog Pony 1, Yugoslavia (2 bikes)
Skyline Weeked, made in Austria and much like the Automini's, circa 1969
Rapido 1972, Czekoslovakia
Rapido Folder 1986, Czekoslovakia
Universal 1974 and Supercycle Universal 1976, Poland (3 bikes)
Unic-Sport, France, with 24in wheels
Maino 2000, Italy, circa 1985

Have many folding bikes built by Victoria Precision Works in Montreal, sold under various brand names
in the 70's and 80's. The bikes below are all built on the same ESGE frame used by Automini and other
manufacturers. So if you like Automini's you should have a look at:
Leader Voyageur (4 bikes)
Grand Prix (2 bikes)
Supercycle Traveller

I hope to get in touch with other Canadian folding bike enthusiasts to share info and parts. More to come on how I got involved in this hobby and how my girlfriend deals with 30+ bikes on my property !

Stephane Lapointe

Salut Stephane

Merci bien pour les fotos trés interessantes! ça va si j'ajoute un 'link' pour le musée sur mon site?
J'espere que tu trouvera plusiers pliants dans l'avenir!

Excuse ma 'Frelsh' (Frangllois!)

Bon chance! :thumb:

Dear Chop!
thanks for visiting my web site, I knew about your A to Z folding bikes link page and visited a few times. Please go ahead and put a link to my site ! I'm not sure if I'm linking to your's right now but I will add a link somewhere for sure. I just purchased another folding bike Wednesday so sorry if I didn't reply earlier. It's an early Auto-Mini with ESGE frame number in the 11000 range. By the way your French is quite good, I know it's not easy to write.

Stephane

Hello Stephanie
I read that you said ESGE frame .....
ESGE was a company who made kickstands and carriers and fenders in Germany .... went bust in the late 80 s ... Besides the kickstands they had made at Pletscher in Switzerland they also " invented" a frame plate for the chainstay and the seatstays which prominently featured their name. Those plates were used by many many many european bike companies as they offered an ideal spot to mount a carrier and fenders and a brake ..... but they only made those, not the whole frames
The kickstands are still around under the Pletscher brand and the fenders got bought by SKS and their premium fenders are still the same as the Esge ones ( or very similar )

Thor

Interestingly my old boss Mr Schauff made his own plate which looked like an S and was doing the same than the Esge Plate .... I know Esge wasnt all too thrilled about that at the time ...

I enjoyed my visit to your web site and I was impressed with your collection and the way you present the information. I wonder where your fascination and love of vintage folders comes from. Also, how long will it take before the designed in Quebec GOBKE makes it into the collection?
Salut mon ami.

Stephane, cool post and website! Welcome to the forum. :)

Stephane. Awesome bikes and site. Wished i could speak and write French.Too late to teach an old dog new tricks. Although i can usually get the general jist when reading slowly. I find myself often reading the 2 offiical Canadian languages on products and comparing. Ive learned a bit doing that. Cheers

Thank you very much for the precision about the ESGE company. I am surprised to learn they were manufacturing only the plate where the rear rack and brake caliper are fixed to the frame. Since there are no other markings on the frame I assumed they were manufacturing the whole thing.

Now the question is what company was building the frame itself ? As mentionned in the inital thread post, I am talking about the popular frame with a rectangular cross-section used by companies like Auto-Mini and Skyline, both from Austria. The same frame was used by Victoria Precision in Canada to build folding bikes sold under different brand names including Leader, Leader Voyageur, Grand Prix, Supercycle Traveller, etc...

This frame was produced in huge numbers, I have an Auto-Mini with frame number 11447 and a Grand Prix with frame number 647884 so there are over half a million bikes produced ! There are minor differences as the frame evolved with time, the most notable one is the bottom bracket size.

Thanks for any info you have one this frame.

Thanks for your comments, I'm happy to read from another Canadian folding bike enthusiast ! I might translate some of the web site to English in the future but I'm quite busy restoring vintage bikes right now. I figure the pictures are communicating most of the message. Cheers

I will probably post a new thread about the fine art of collecting vintage bikes, but the hobby started as the intersection between two of my interests: vintage cars and cycling. I have been restoring and fixing old cars for the past 20 years and earn a living selling car parts and fixing cars, mostly older Volvo's. I also enjoy bike touring and started travelling on bikes in 1982.

I always had in the back of my mind that it would be a good idea to purchase a folding bike to avoid pedalling back and forth on the same bike route when touring. With a folder I could jump on a bus, train or plane to get back. So last summer I stopped at a yard sale in my area and spotted an old brown bike in unknown condition written Twenty on it. I knew nothing at all about folding bikes back then and I got the bike for $35. Once home a cleaned it, shined the chrome and fixed whatever was loose, and I couldn't resist the analogy with vintage cars and how much character the bike has, with lots of chrome, rugged and simple design, etc... But the real passion started after I tried the bike and found out a folding bike with small wheels rides very good and is a lot of fun to drive, notably in town and off road, also it is the ideal bike to go for a ride with my young kids (because it slows you down compare to a full size bike).

So I started collecting vintage folding bikes seriously in September 2009 and I was able to purchase 22 in about 6 months. Another future post will give trick on how to find vintage bikes for cheap, even free.

About the GOBKE I will eventually come across one at the price I wish to pay (low) but I don't see them up for sale, it is not a common bike even here in Quebec.

Regards,