Classic & Vintage - giordana bicycles?

does anyone know anything about the frames sold with this label on them? like - who made tham, and what are they made from, that sort of thing. i got a giordana track bike at a garage sale a few years ago, and i'm just curious to know something about its pedigree. my guess as to vintage is early 80s.

late 80 early 90s they came out. It is the same company that makes the clothes. Good frames overall. White color was the normal for the bikes.


S/F,
CEYA!

late 80 early 90s they came out. It is the same company that makes the clothes. Good frames overall. White color was the normal for the bikes.


S/F,
CEYA!

I concur. The bicycles/frames were introduced in 1989. The distributor, Gita Sporting Goods, also distributed De Rosa, Eddy Merckx and Pinarello during this period and some people have suggested Pnarello as the manufacturer. They point to the fact that of these four brands, only Giordana and Pinarello were offering a bicycle built with Oria ML25 tubing. It certainly didn't hurt the argument that both bicycles had the same groupset and the Giordana was priced only $50 US under the comparable Pinarello. However, to counter this argument, Giordana also marketed mountain bikes and a road model with Excel tubing, something that was not in Pinarello's line-up for the appropriate year.

White may have been the most popular colour, but I have certainly seen lots of other colours including multi-colour fades and splatters. Personally, I always liked the graphics of the Giordana bicycles, especially the font of their logo.

All the models I have seen have copied the early 1980s Bridgestone practice of using the the names of stars for the models (i.e. Antares, Polaris, etc.).

If memory serves, and I have forgotten more than I remember, Giordana was imported by Ten Speed Drive Imports out of Florida, later known as Gita. TSDI/Gita also imported Giordana clothing and introduced the Giordana brand on bicycle frames in an attempt to exploit the name recognition of the Giordana clothing brand. I could be wrong, but I don't think there is a Giordana bicycle company in Italy. These are rebadged frames made by a manufacturer in Italy, along the lines of Torelli. Who the manufacturer was, I don't know.

You might try a search of the Classic Rendezvous archives at www.bikelist.org for more info.

If memory serves, and I have forgotten more than I remember, Giordana was imported by Ten Speed Drive Imports out of Florida, later known as Gita. TSDI/Gita also imported Giordana clothing and introduced the Giordana brand on bicycle frames in an attempt to exploit the name recognition of the Giordana clothing brand.

Gita was a separate company from Ten Speed Drive Imports. Gita was in North Carolina while TSDI was in Florida. They co-existed for most of the 1980s and into the 1990s. You may be confusing Giordana with Guerciotti. TSDI was the exclusive Guerciotti importer until Victory Sports Int'l took over the distribution in the early 1990s. Gita was the Giordana distributor.

Gita was a separate company from Ten Speed Drive Imports. Gita was in North Carolina while TSDI was in Florida. They co-existed for most of the 1980s and into the 1990s. You may be confusing Giordana with Guerciotti. TSDI was the exclusive Guerciotti importer until Victory Sports Int'l took over the distribution in the early 1990s. Gita was the Giordana distributor.

Told ya I've forgotten more than I remember. ;) I pull this stuff out of the synapse archives, not some book or website, so... :), but I'm not cornfusing Giordana with Guerciotti. :rolleyes: Just a little fuzzy on the distributor info. I think TSDI was the Giordana clothing distributor for awhile, at least I thought we used to buy their clothes from TSDI.