Originally Posted by
dbarnblatt@usa.
I'm still convinced it's post 1980. A touring model of some sort. The graphics are definitely the clue. And as far as the braise ons. Motobecane held off for a long time before they started to use them on thier Mid to upper end bikes. All the lower end bikes had them (Super Mirage, Nobly, etc.) throuout the 1970's.
Here is a 1976 Grand Record downtube... and they stayed with this look until 1977 or so when they changed the company downtube graphic to more modern style bock letters (example, from the 1979 catalog). They continued to use that graphic well through the 1980's. They added the banded graphics on the downtube and seattube around 1979 and later lost the banded style and added a plastic "Motobecane" badge on the top tube. It was during the early 1980's that they switched to the blue, white, red "M" headbadge.
gr23932's original question was specifically about the use of 3 braze-on cable guides ABOVE the top tube - which are not present on his bike. This is a far more significant indicator than the paint ... whch was already seen on some of the bikes by the summer of 1978 and possibly earlier, anyway.
By the 1979 model year Motobecane was already using the 3 braze-on top tube guides on ALL of their bikes. - It does not make sense to me that they would remove them again briefly around 1980 ... produce this bike ... and then go back to using the braze-on top tube guides again.
So I'll still guess at 1977-78.