Originally Posted by
mongol777
Thanks to T-Mar again I'd be paying much more close attention to CCMs now. If he was surprised I liked Targa - who knows how higher end CCM would feel :-D
Btw, is it true statement that CCM Concorde was made out Reynolds 531? Full or just main triangle?
All Concordes had a silver brazed, plain gauge, Reynolds 531 main triangle mated to hi-tensile stays and forks.
Originally Posted by
84 Bianchi
CCM can be very hit or miss. 60s CCMs are beautiful bikes. I would have thought by the mid-80s they would be department store junkers. I guess I don't know my CCM history well enough, but know well enough that they are sold next to the Supercycle's at Canadian Tire these days.
In the 1960s there was very little competition for CCM. They had built a good reputation and were profitably coasting on it, courtesy of the post war baby boom Their coaster brake and 3 speeds were competent but nothing special. However, everybody thought they were great because of past reputation and there was not much to compare them to.
When they re-introduced the lighweights to their line-up in the very late 1960s they'd lost what they'd done with the Flyer and concentrated on the entry level. Again, it was competent stuff but nothing special. They ended up revising the line a couple times during the boom but nothing flew out the doors, except for the bottom of the line Turismos and Targas, for the reasons stated previously. THe CCM weren't great. nor were they bad. Their market failure was more the result of social circumstance than design and workmanship.
Basically, CCM's iconic image backfired on them. It was a time of teen unrest. They thought the adults had made a mess of everything, so there was a lot of resistance to establsihed domestic corporations like CCM. Instead they turned to the new (to them) European brands and then the Japanese.There were no parental ties to these names. They were free and clear of parental contamination.
CCM struggled on into the early 1980s with governmental assistance, then went bankrupt. Procycle bought the brand and assets but not the factory. Trouble was that Procycle already had Peugeot and Velosport. The CCM line was relegated to entry level and lower mid-range models. Then Procycle started adding other brands and CCM got pushed into the chain stores like Walmart and Canadian Tire. A couple of years ago, Procycle sold the brand to one of the companies in the Reebok corporation whom they had originally sold the hockey side of the business too. This company struck a deal giving Canadian Tire exclusive use of the CCM name and all the manufacturing was tendered out to CTC's bicycle suppliers, mainly in China.