Originally Posted by
Oldairhead
Forget the Lemon D's which although are nice bikes most are basically Treks. The Della Santa has it all, a C & V provenance and the aura of Lemond.
Originally Posted by
Chuckk
But, since most of the Trek-Lemond interest is in the slack, O.S. 853, welded in the U.S. bikes - What model Trek should we be looking for?
Originally Posted by
a77impala
If my 2000 Zurich is basically a Trek according to some experts on this thread, tell me what model would that be?
Lemond frames after whatever year it was (sometime in the 90s) were made by Trek, but they were not designed by Trek. (Kind of like Waterford, Curt Goodrich and various others have built Rivendells. but they do not design custom Rivendells). As a general rule, Lemonds will have slacker seat tube angles and longer top tubes than what Trek was making. Also, by the time Trek was making Lemonds, Trek was not selling that many steel frames - as I recall (and I'm not 100% sure about this), the touring-oriented 520 and the tandems were mainly it for Trek steel by the time they started building Lemond frames, and carbon fiber with some aluminum holdovers ruled the Trek racing and fast sport riding lines.
And while I agree that scoring a properly provenance Della Santa-built Lemond would be the bee's knees, the Trek-built Lemonds ride very well. Or at least my 2000 Zurich did.