Bottechia on CL
 

Hey all. I don't need a bike. But this vintage Italian caught my eye on Craigslist. I know not a thing about Bottechias and there isn't a lot of search material to go on. I just like the look of it, and being half-Italian I've always sort of fantasized about having an Italian road bike like my cousins in Italy used to ride and make me jealous of when I was a kid on my coaster-brake Schwinn. $165? Any opinions/info would be appreciated.

http://milwaukee.craigslist.org/bik/830668041.html

If it fits, contact the seller IMMEDIATELY and buy it. 165$ is a great price for such a beautiful ride.

i wonder if he still has the prestige derailleur he replaced

It appears to be a 1970s Bottecchia De Luxe that is missing the decals. It has the top tube pump pegs, so my guess is that is an early to mid 1970s, boom era model. This was their entry level lighweight and has a hi-tensile frame with steel cranks and rims. I can't get reat excited, given the price, as this model sold for $135, circa 1973. Is Milwaukee a really high priced market?

Hardly. The opposite.

I'm with T-Mar on this one. Make him an offer of $100 if you really like it. It's a nice smooth riding bike and you could pick up a set of decals from JRrestore on the forums here (where are you JR? Are those decals ready? ;) ) You'd want to replace the steel rims if you're going to ride it much. And just FYI, that fork is probably fully chrome plated and polished under the paint so if you wanted you could strip the paint off the fork ends for a little additional bling.

...still waiting for a nice clean 23" Special Model to come along...sigh

He wouldn't go lower than $150. I passed. Actually it was a sweet, smooth ride and I might've bit if it had looked as good as the pictures. But it wasn't as clean as the photos - a bit scuffed up. I hated the saddle too - I like 'em hard, especially on a road bike. By the time I'd have had it painted, applied the decals, swapped the saddle and rims and probably the brakes...no. There'll be another day for my dream vintage Italian road bike.

Sounds like you made the right move. That's not a horrible bike but it isn't anybody's dream vintage Italian road bike, more like a nice stylin' bar-hopper/grociery getter and it would have cost way too much to fix up the way you want it. Who knows, the way prices are these days he might get $150 for it, almost certainly if it were in better shape but there's better out there.

The thing is, I'm not knowledgeable and my dream is fuzzy. Someday I'd just love to have a vintage road bike like my cousin and his friends in Italy had when I was a kid. They came in beautiful bright colors, particularly blue or yellow, they had superb lines and went really fast (even up the steep end of the mountain to the village in Umbria where my family lives). This would've been the late 60s and 70s. I remember one in particular that was yellow and grey/silver and had the make written in cursive. Pretty sure these weren't cheap or bottom-of-the-line bikes - my Italian relatives aren't poor. Anyway I was just in awe of those bikes next to the boring identical Schwinns all my friends and me had at home in the U.S., or the cruiser with the curved top tube that was my loaner bike in Italy. That Bottecchia, had it looked as sweet as it did in the photo, was not unlike what I'm imagining. I've done some Googling and such but haven't really found anything that makes me say, aha! Maybe my memory is idealizing it. I've asked my damn cousin but he shrugs and says he can't remember. That's b.s. of course. He just doesn't want the American to have a nicer Italian bike than him.

I was fairly impressed that a bike that was obviously sold at such a low price point had such a graceful frame design. But I agree, I bet there are some vintage high-quality racing bikes in Milwaukee that could be had for not much more than that. Just have to wait for the right person to get tired of tripping over it.

Hehe...tell your cousin he's full of it. It's probably in his basement right now :D But your memory might not help you. The bikes all looked pretty similar so you really have to know what to look for. Hang around the forums here for a few months and you will learn a lot. Here is a picture of my Bottecchia. This is more like what you are looking for. It's the Giro d'Italia Model. The Giro or the Professional are what you want in a Bottecchia from that period.

http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z...r89/tn_008.jpg

That's the look I remember. With the contrasting background on the decals and racing checkers and such. As different from a Schwinn Varsity as a Ferrari is from a Geo Prizm.

The tricky part is that Bottecchia alone produced 4 different models that look almost exactly like that plus the one you saw on CL that would look really similar to that if it had its decals (just missing the chrome). Many other Italian manufacturers were similar so you really need to look closely at the bike to determine where it fits in the lineup. Or post here and we'll be happy to tell you.