rustystrings61 

A 70's era Raleigh would be ideal, because to a large extent, the Carlton-built Raleighs c.1969-1976 pretty much duplicated the geometry of 40s and 50s bikes. @chainwhip quoted @ gugie as describing them as "'70s bikes with 1930s geometry," which is a reasonable assessment. Actually, 1970s Raleighs will be a little more upright - both the '73 Competition and the '73-ish Gran Sport frames currently in my shop are about 73-degrees parallel, as opposed to the 71-degree seat, 73-degree head of a lot of the classic British bikes, or 72 degrees parallel.

I used to own an original clubman style bike, a c.1962 Dawes Realmrider built with "Racelite" lugs and probably Tru-wel tubing. The Realmrider was usually a derailleur bike with 4,5, 8 or 10 speeds and a shifter boss and other suitable brazed-on bits, but mine came with what appeared to be a stock Sturmey-Archer FW gearhub -



- and my memory is that it was roughly 72-degrees parallel. It also had a 42-in wheelbase, and on Panaracer Pasela 27 x 1 1/4 it just floated over the road beautifully. Add Dawes to your search, and especially older Galaxy models, which were roughly comparable to the Raleigh Super Course and built with plain gauge 531 main frames.

While I can appreciate the older parts, I wound up deciding I wanted something new that could produce the same ride experience as a vintage bike, but with contemporary parts and dimensions. I ordered this Mercian in 2002 and received it in early January 2003 and have ridden it many many miles since then. If I had it to do today I would have a little more tire clearance and would specify front-opening but very very long rear dropouts rather than the Campagnolo track ends Mercian supplied. It's in its usual fixed-gear mode here, but could easily be adapted to a Sturmey gearhub. That's 72-degrees parallel, 23 1/2-in seat tube to top with a 41-in wheelbase on 700C wheels, btw.