Originally Posted by
steve sumner
to Gitane1953: there was a model below the Grand Sport Deluxe just called the Grand Sport and there was a model
below that that was so basic and heavy that they wouldn't put Gitane stickers on it and it wasn't in the catalogs.
it was called the Royal Asport. Gitane Pacific (the California importer) didn't want any non-Gitane bikes on our floor
so they gave us 100's of Grand Sport sticker sets and we rebranded the bikes as Sport
That kind of thing was more common than most realize, not only with Gitane. Manufacturers also re-branded bikes so they could sell the same line of bikes to neighboring dealers and such. Importers here brought in tons of bikes badged as what ever they felt like just to get competing models on the showroom floors.
I remember one case in particular back when I was working for a local bike dealer. They had ordered a particular model and received a different model. The customer was set on that one model bike. The supplier sent a decal set for the bike the guy wanted and told us to just change the stickers, "The two models were identical anyhow". There was a $200 difference in the two models. Bikes would come in with no tubing decals, wrong model name decals, and often we would open a box up to find that they changed the color options from what the brochure advertised. Thus the disclaimer on so many brochures stating "Components subject to change" or "Actual models may differ from models pictured". I'm not sure about other areas of the country but here Gitane was a brand brought in by an independent importer, not a manufacturer's dealer network. The bikes weren't always spec'd out as advertised and on occasion odd models would show up.