Originally Posted by
Feldman
My favorite execution of this is what Motobecane used to do on their better mixtes--rear brake cable ran down the "top" tube with the brake mounting on the middle stays; no muss, no fuss, no curved piece of housing for the cable to rust inside. Sorry,no pic of one to attach.
This execution is only possible with stays from the head tube to the rear dropouts : this triangular geometry is sometimes called Albert Six who was the creator of this design used on the Narcisse tandems in the 30's.
The OP's CACEG frame geometry was introduced by Meral in 1978 with the famous bended top tube.
As it was successful, small builders such as SMG or CACEG used it with a straight top tube from 1979. It was then copied by big brands like Mercier and Peugeot. In the 1980 catalog, the Peugeot PF65 frame was named torpedo, besides classic mixte models with triangular frames.