Originally Posted by Trakhak

That would have been an older post. Last time I looked, he had come around to the idea that the tubing labeled "Raleigh 555" (and the other variants) was supplied by Tange or Ishiwata or another Asian manufacturer.

There are several arguments against the idea that the Raleigh-labeled tubing was relabeled Reynolds, the main one being that paying Reynolds to ship their expensive tubing from England to Taiwan, only to disguise it with a lookalike decal that says "Raleigh," thus diminishing the appeal of the bike, makes no sense.

The clincher, for me, is that, at the same time that most of the Raleigh USA models were labeled "Raleigh 555" and the like, the Raleigh USA Grand Prix had a genuine Reynolds 531 label. There would have been no point to correctly labeling one bike built with Reynolds tubing while simultaneously using Reynolds tubing in other frames but sticking the "Raleigh" label on those.

I was working in a shop that sold Raleigh bikes during that period. I wish it had occurred to me to ask the sales rep the retrospectively obvious question concerning the source of the tubing. New England reticence on my part, I guess.