The TdF (back in the first half of the 70's anyway) was never sold with anything but 700c tubulars. Back in Erie, it was the big jump in the local marketplace between an nice entry level bike and something really serious.
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Syke
“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
H.L. Mencken, (1926)