Originally Posted by
noglider
It depends on whom you ask! People here in C&V live and breathe bicycles, and we appreciate many qualities a bike can have, including workmanship that is better than it needs to be for the designated function. Yet there are people who are "into" cycling to lesser degrees who might admire or remember one bike or another. And there are also people who barely ever get on a bike and might be aware of only a few names. With that last category, you might ask what the most famous bike brand is. In the US, folks might say Schwinn, and in Canada, I guess it would be CCM. And the analogous Italian person is like to say Olmo or Bianchi.
I think T-Mar would be a little better knowledgeable on the Canadian makers (I think there was even a canadian crescent), but some things were obvious to us average riders, especially during the early boom years. Most of us knew about the import restrictions on bicycles (wonder how much of a hand CCM had in that, and who's ears they had), and knew what to expect.
Just based on build quality, the Sekine operation was a god-send to those of us who liked decent build quality mass production bikes. It got to the point of CCM competing with everyone else on price, and the results were entirely predictable. CCM pretty well had the bottom rung with Raleigh being next, and then Sekine, etc.
-D.S.