You are right, I don't think anyone will actually be fooled with the Herse. But...it was my understanding that it is not a case of Herse hiring Nobilette to build their bikes but of them simply selling the Herse brand which has not been used in years to an unconnected person who is then having Nobilette build the bikes. The difference is that Masi still owned the comapny and presumably was dictating the design and implementing quality control of some sort regardless of who was weilding the torch. Did I misunderstand that part of it? I thought the only Herse involvement was to sell the name and cash the check. If I'm wrong about that then forget everything I said, it's all good

Nobody lives forever and we all hope to retire someday so if you run a family business you have to turn it over to somebody someday or close it. In many cases that somebody will be your children but it could be a partner or anyone. Hopefully you care enough about your life's work to at least try to insure that whoever you are turning it over to intends to continue the brand indentity, especially if they are using your name. But if instead you decide to shut it down and let the business and brand die with you, so be it. Let it stay buried and let Nobilette build Nobilettes. The at least we'll always have Nobilettes. Instead, we're going to end up having Nobilette Herses for a while until he get really well known and succssfull and decides he want's to build Nobilettes under his own name and then Herse will hire somebody new and then we'll have a new thread arguing about whether the Nobilette period Herses were better or the later ones