Originally Posted by
unterhausen
I'm almost positive this bike was built in the mid-70s. I'm pretty sure I'm right about that because of the reasons in my other post. But it has the narrow Reynolds fork blades that really went out of style in the mid-'70s. Vertical dropouts were in style in the mid-70s, but went back out of style when Campy introduced the short horizontal dropouts (1010b). By the time vertical dropouts were common again, the fork blades would have been fatter.
Being a young traditionalist in the mid-70s, I tended to dismiss radical ideas such as vertical dropouts. But since you brought it up, I seem to recall them occurring in some of the criterium designs by Tanguy and even Ben Serotta. They may have fallen into disuse because of the renewed interest in traditional (and mostly Italian) road frames just as much as the 1010b dropouts. I can remember when a lot of the big guns were riding some pretty far out stuff in 1974-75, and then in 1976 everybody started showing up on Colnagos, Gioses, and California Masis.
As for skinny, hooky fork blades, they were indeed falling out of fashion but still plentiful by the late 70s. By this time Reynolds also started producing a blade that was beginning to resemble the stout, gracefully curved Columbus blades we all lusted for. This period still produced plenty of experiments and anachronisms among North American and British builders, so your mid-70s estimate is at least as plausible as my 80s.
I think we can agree, though, that this bike is positively not Italian or French.