Originally Posted by
Road Fan
My Italian bike I refer to was in fact not a more modern bike, but less modern. It was one of an odd lot of Rossignolis that Turin Cycles had found, with a hodge-podge of excellent but obsolete components: Campy steel Record, early hubs, Nisi Evian (I think) rims in 36/28 spokings, a Magistroni and FB chainset, Sheffield pedals, a Brooks Pro and a wierd Simplex or AVA seatpost. The geometry was rather laid back with 44 or so cm chainstays, and it rode very smooth and very efficient. Tubing was a question mark but several shops commented on the quality of the frame while I had it. The bike was much higher quality than the Torpado we're talking about here.
From your description and the time period that sounds like a higher-end model, something similar to how my Bottecchia Giro d'Italia would have been equipped at the time, and I suspect it could have been a second from top of the line model maybe even built from Columbus tubing.
Just based on observations as I have no actual evidence, it seems like while Reynolds made a variety of 531 tubing that could be used to build bikes at different price points, Columbus only had SL & SP at the time so Italian bikes, that were usually made of Italian tubing, were either straight gauge hi-ten steel or Columbus double-butted chromoly. The proliferation of Columbus tubing types came later in the late 70's and the 80's and that's when we started seeing the straight gauge Columbus tubing and tretubi frames and such but not in the 60's.
I've tried to stir discussion on the topic of hi-tenisle tubing before without much success (yeah I know, it's not a very exciting topic) but I know of at least one Italian manufacturer, Atala, who specifically spec'd a different tubing identified as 'high tensile "Tullio" seemless tubing' on their mid-range model. Presumably this tubing was different from the tubing on their lower models which simply specified 'best quality seemless steel tubing' but I have no idea what that difference might have been.
Another thread I started that didn't go anywhere was one about whether distributors had any great effect on bike spec during the boom (which btw IIRC, there was a mini-boomlet in 68-70 when sales doubled and then the big boom in '71-'74 when sales doubled yet again). I started it because the component spec on my old Bottecchia Special differed fairly significantly from others I've seen, in many cases being much better, and I wondered whether a large distributor might have been able to order a shipment of bikes with specific components that differed from catalog spec. Something like that might explain why you remember seeing Italian bikes with Japanese components in 1970. Could a distributor have been ordering frames or partial bikes and "upgrading" them with the Japanese components?
I have Bottecchia catalogs for 1972 & 1973 and Atala from 1974 and there are no Japanese components listed for any of the models of those brands.