Bike Forums - Bottecchia mystery solved!!!

Ok it’s not the Shroud of Turin mystery or where Jimmy Hoffa is buried but it was bugging me for a while and now I have the answer…

When I bought my Bottecchia Giro d’Italia a few years ago, a bike I identified as a 1972 model based on the 1972 date code on the hub lock nuts, it had one oddity – a Stronglight 49D crankset. Odd only in that the catalog spec and every example I’ve seen had a Nervar Star crankset. Not a big deal given the supply issues during the bike boom. Eventually the 49D found a home on my Peugeot and I acquired a Nervar Star for the Bottecchia and all was well.

Then a couple of years ago, I bid on a 1973 Bottecchia catalog on eBay but lost but I did save a copy of the eBay picture.

Finally last year some time I think, a fellow forum member (sorry, I forget who but you’re probably reading this so refresh my memory :) ) showed pictures of a Bottecchia with a Professional/Giro d’Italia type Columbus-tubed frame with Campagnolo dropouts but with a “Gran Turismo” decal right there on the top tube. That just didn’t make any sense. The apparently only complete Bottecchia catalog left in the Universe, a 1972 copy, clearly shows the Gran Turismo model as a lower model with a hi-tensile steel frame, essentially the same bike as the Special model but with the long cage derailleur and Campagnolo Nuovo Tipo hubs.

And today, all of the pieces fell into place. For no particular reason I was looking at that picture of the '73 catalog and something struck me as odd – the resolution of that eBay picture is too low to make out much detail or read much of the text but one thing was clear – the pictures of the Professional and Giro d’Italia models were the exact same ones from the 1972 catalog, a common practice at the time – but the Gran Turismo was not. It was obvious because in the ’72 picture the bike is yellow and in the ’73 picture it is red. Why would they update only the Gran Turismo’s picture?...unless, the Gran Turismo model had changed significantly. So I blew up the picture, strained my eyes to see…

…and there it was in the description…

Hand made frame – COLUMBUS tubing with front and rear fork ends CAMPAGNOLO RECORD – finished lugs

Aha!!! So that explains the frame we saw in that post. Looking close at the picture you can just make out cable clamps on the top tube (the old Gran Turismo/Special frame had braze-ons) and…the clear star shape pattered chainwheel of a Stronglight crank! Alas all I can make out of the description is “Chainwheel Aluminum racing model double plateau” which is the same as the Professional/Giro d’Italia description but it is definitely a Stronglight crank.

So that mystery is solved – that really was the high-end Columbus frame with Gran Turismo decals (ok I know that raises another mystery because I remember the owner saying a would only fit a smaller seat post like maybe a 26.8 or something but that's a mystery for another day) and it’s even possible that my bike is in fact a Gran Turismo rather than a Giro d’Italia – probably impossible to say for sure since mine had no decal left on the top tube and a replacement Suntour derailleur when I got it but it could be that the model change happened sometime in '72 after the catalog was printed or that my bike is really a '73 and they had some '72 hubs lying around. Inventory control in those days left something to be desired.