If there's one thing I've learned in ten years of C&V membership, it's that decals don't mean much. At least not what you'd expect them to mean.

I have a high end Koga-Miyata masquerading as a Gazelle Champion Mondial, a Flandria in Raleigh team livery and quite a few Belgian frames with big names like Pinarello, Jan Janssen, Jan de Reus and Vittorio. Sometimes the decals are legit, sometimes they're not. In most cases they're there to add value, in one way or another.

This is where it gets interesting. Today I picked up this Altra-branded bike. Now, Altra is a rather well-known brand where I live. It is the house brand of a bicycle franchise organisation. They are usually city bikes built to a price, typically by a lowest bidder, to enable the franchise members to offer a cheap alternative to the Gazelles and Batavus' in their shop. Altras are not collectors items. Nobody searches for "Altra" on ebay.

Yet, when I saw this Altra pop up in the classifieds, I immediately wanted it. Knowing that Altra never had its own production facility, the odds were pretty good that this came from the shop that became famous for this frame style: Méral.

Méral was a small bicycle company in the Loire valley, founded in 1974 by Albert Metayer. Workshop manager was Francis Quillon, who is credited as the designer of this frame style. During its existence Méral has made a name for itself by producing high end quality bikes at reasonable prices. In 1983 Méral was taken over by Lejeune.

Anyway, this is what I came home with. Daylight was going, so only this one fuzzy phone pic for now. Will take better pics tomorrow.

SKS fenders, CLB brakes, Huret transmission and Atom (?) pedals seem to be original. Behind the fugly "Chain Disc" hides a nice Stronglight TS 50/40 chainset. ITM Krystal stem and Shimano Altus RD are probably later additions.