Originally Posted by
BigChief
In 1970, Raleigh started to market the DL-1 in the US as a bike especially for tall people since it was available with a 24" frame even though it was essentially a 1930s bicycle.
Quick footnote to that - though it wasn't shown in contemporary US catalogs until 1970, I'm pretty sure it's availability in the US pre-dates 1970.
There are quite a few US-spec examples with 1968 hub dates (and '67, IIRC) out there - enough that it's a bit of a stretch to say that these are early 1970 production models. (Maybe Raleigh ran a test of the market in the Northeast?)
-Kurt