Originally Posted by
irwin7638
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my understanding is that the French designers came up with the mixte design as a useful city bike. What I have gleaned from different comments on blogs is that the market was actually delivery boys in Europe during the war years. The twin tubes create a little better lateral stability, the third stay more strength for carrying loads, and the lower top tubes simply make it easier to get on and off a heavily loaded bike.
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See, this is interesting. People today tend to equate the mixte with a city bike or a cruiser, but the typical mixte frame geometry is actually that of a road bike, in the sense that it has very steep seat tube and head tube angles. At least the 1970s-80s Motobecane mixtes were definitely meant as road bikes and touring bikes; they were direct parallels to the diamond frame models. I always thought the load capacity was there for touring and not for transport. I would be very interested to know the head&seat tube angles of the really early models, like the 1947 mixte from Rene Herse.