Next sentence up from your quote cut...

"They had a red paramount and an orange 1974 Motobecane Team Champion which they only brought out for special rides."

I've only seen a few 1974-76 Motobecane Team Champion/Champion Team bikes in the flesh (maybe 5 at most).

Most of them were at events during the mid 70s like the Iron Horse Race in Durango, Colorado and others in the Southwest plus several centurys. I think that only one was marked Champion Team, that's how I found out about the US vs. French versions. I was a "bike freak" so I looked for those kinds of things.

Those bikes were extremely rare. I'd guess that there were probably less than a hundred or so a year of them brought into the US between 1974 and 1976.

Because they stand out (and are survivors), some folks have the misimpression that bikes like these were falling out of trees!

Sites like Bike Forums and Classic Rendezvous are place where people interested in olde bikes congregate and their pictures skew the reality of how many rare bikes are left out there.

Consider the economics back then... You could get a VW for $1900 USD and a cheap Chevy for $2300!

Bike racing and the interest in expensive bikes were centered around a few large cities and college towns around the US. Bikes were still considered toys by many!

Most of the millions of bikes sold during the Bike Boom era were ~$100 entry level models bought by or for people under 25 years old - probably average age 18. Not many could afford an all Campy bike.

$600 FER A BIKE! YOU GOTTA BE OUTTA YER TREE!

I suspect that many of the 1974-76 Motobecane Champion Team bikes that show up in the US have been brought over from Europe during the past 10 years. I have no proof of this but "all Campy" bikes represented far less than a few percent of all the bikes sold in the US during the 1970s.

Of course, les spécifications sont sujettes à modification sans préavis - specifcations subject to change, yada,yada,yada...

The bike boom was over by mid 1974. Perhaps by 1975 there was not enough demand for Motobecane to make frames marked Team Champion for the US market, who knows.

Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus and I have seen orange Team Champion Motos.

You can trust me because I never lie and I'm always right!

verktyg

Chas.