So very cool. Some background, for those interested.
Ashley, AKA
A. Winthrop, wrote the Centurion article for Sheldon Brown's web page on Centurions, is a former reporter (as if they ever quit...) He provided the Kool-Aid for myself and
JYB when it came to the Equipe, and he somehow injected me with some kind of Centurion drug.
Over time, as I pursued Centurion info and stuff, Ashley kept a nagging interest in the origins of what many called the "fake" Cinelli: the Equipe they produced for Centurion. He's the one who uncovered Mr. Goldsmith (a wealth of information) along with a couple of other people who knew the insides, a bit, of WSI, Centurion's parent firm.
Equipe owners have a constant inferiority complex about their Cinellis, and it took about a year to determine and confirm they were made in Italy. We tossed around conjecture and speculation, which sometimes yielded information when someone realized we were wrong, and corrected us with
facts.
The variance in decals, we've just now gotten a grip on. There seems to have been only two "official" decal sets. The "Project" set was put on the two matte black prototypes, and have since appeared on a very clean blue model, which the owner confirms he bought, brand new, from a bike shop. The "production" set included the awful lavendar/black Centurion decals that came on the production run. Early on, some owners turned to Jim Cunningham at CycleArt to remedy this situation, and his version of the decals is actually one of the more popular versions I've had presented to me as "original." CycleArt is that good. As for the orange/green decals, I don't know. It seems to me that someone let Peter Max into the decal shop that day.
Many owners went with the idea that the bike was a Cinelli, and got around the decals and silver paint with their own schemes. The Equipes of
poprad,
jan nikolajsen, and one of my first builds are good examples of Equipes repainted and decaled with just the flying C or older versions of Cinelli labeling.
ggl205 is just finishing up a rehab of what may have been another prototype, as it had shadows of the "Project" decals still visible on it.
When I bought my second one, I had to sweat out a possible bid from one of those "
other buyers interested" that you wonder about when a CL seller is trying to set the hook. I bought the bike after waiting out the seller, and shortly thereafter, I was contacted by the actual "
other buyer," also known here as
valentinodel. He owned one of the prototypes, a flat black Equipe with the red "Project" decal kit, and sent me a photo of it. I outlasted him on my Equipe by $25, something which I'm relieved to know and he was a little chagrined to find out. He's probably got one of the rarest of all, a prototype. A super nice guy, and he actually was chasing some Equipe info out west.
In the midst of all that,
afilado was tracking one of the blue ones, sometimes called the mystery Equipe. Very similar to the silver Equipe, but outfitted without chrome on the frame and with an SC fork, they sure seemed like Equipes, but I'd never seen one with any decals. He bought it and joined the hunt for information. When the latest blue one showed up, purchased new with the "Project" decal kit, it now seemed that those blue frames may well have been produced after the prototypes and before the production run. We'll probably never know, but the preponderance of evidence points to them being Chirico-produced. I've now seen about 4 of them. The largest concentration of the silver Equipes was at 123bikes in Mt. Airy, MD, I believe, which had a web site that is now down. He had several, and last I checked, wanted 1700 each.
Information on the bike's production was gleaned from a blog on Cinellis, Classic Rendevous, and a frame detective who lives in England, cross-referenced with information provided by Alan Goldsmith, with the gentle prodding of A. Winthrop. I actually encountered the gentleman in England when I had my Equipe on eBay (it didn't sell) The last push was from his thread put here on BF about
Chirico frames. What I've learned since then has been super to know.
The little tidbit about Super Corsa production by Chirico is interesting, as one of the sources feels these were for the North American market, and likely not all of the SC's were built there, but no one is checking on that. As two frame builders have told me, my SC was obviously set up with eyelets at the factory. I'd kind of like to know what the reason for that was (my guess is for racks, for brevets).
Now, on a different, but still
Centurion topic:
Alan Goldsmith has said he "
doesn't understand the fuss" about the Ironman bikes. Uh,
what?
I just may have to go visit the man....
and P.S.:
I believe one of our own came home from Trexlertown with one of the aforementioned blue beauties.....