Originally Posted by
JimR56
Last year, I made an effort on this forum to collect information about Mercier bikes and find answers to questions such as yours (my sense is that the U.S. import (1969-1972) Merciers were indeed different in this respect from European exampes, and possibly those exported to Canada and perhaps other countries. Other details varied too, according to the markets they were shipped to). The general lack of interest in the details and history of Mercier bikes was pretty discouraging, and I eventually gave up trying to keep the thread going, but it still exists for anyone who may be interested:
50 years later, another Mercier
That's great, Jim--thanks for the heads-up on that earlier thread. I see you are also in the Bay Area and apparently of my generation. And perhaps that's a key to this interest in these bikes. In that period these French bikes were most often the ones we knew best, and in their better models ll, the ones we might aspire to own. Whether a Mercier 300 or a PX-10, they were both serious and possibly affordable bikes for a younger person. They were real racing bikes, with sewup tires, man! True, the Merciers never had the following here the Peugeots did, but that was simply because they weren't promoted nearly as much in North America, and I suspect that for more documentation we would need to reach out to our French friends, for whom Mercier was an extremely popular brand, having perhaps the most admired racing team and star, M. Poulidor. In any event, these old French racing bikes do have an undeniable allure for those of us who came of serious riding age during the great Bike Boom. And a Mercier can usually be found at a reasonable price.