Originally Posted by
Picchio Special
There's no "rumour" regarding Colnago - they built quite a few Molteni team bikes over a number of years.
There's also a ton of evidence, by the way, that De Rosa also built at least a few of the very early production Merckx frames - I've seen some that are pretty nearly indisputable.
I am not any kind of expert in this, but what I was referring to was the rumour that Ernesto Colnago
himself ever built a frame for Eddy (or anyone else for that matter), not whether Eddy rode on Colnago-
branded frames...but that's another controversy we don't need to raise.
Words I have read (including an account by Richard Sachs) is that the first frames built for the Milan Cycle trade show (show bikes) were almost certainly made in DeRosa's shop and since the lugs had the distinctive cutouts, the stay caps engraved "DeRosa" and the stays a distinctive shape: there was little doubt where they came from, though this "accepted fact" was never made public. I've also read that the early production frames that were made in Belgium had some of the same frame bits (lugs but not with heart cut-outs, stays and even DeRosa forkcrowns and stay caps) and this is the reason that people say that DeRosa was actually building frames there. Others say it only proves where Merckx was sourcing his frame building bits during early days.