michael69

I just seen a video on youtube that showed all new centurion bikes. go to youtube search centurion. apparently there was a bike show in the netherlands.can someone tell me whats goin on? is this the same centurion I'm familiar with.p1pb5810440.jpg

CardiacKid

Centurion was an import company. They imported bikes from various manufacturers and rebranded them. There is nothing special about the name today. Add them to the list with Schwinn, Motobecane,...

frantik

Centurion is a brand name of WSI. They were an American company importing bikes built in Japan to their design specs. Nishiki, Univega, Lotus and other American companies had similar business models.

WSI also used Diamondback as a brandname, and in the 90s dropped Centurion name in favor of Diamondback. According to Wikipedia, WSI went out of business in 2000, so any bike made today with Centurion brand name has no connection with a C&V Centurion

Chicago Al 

I hesitate to contradict what Ashley Wright wrote about Centurion, but Ashley was working with what information he could glean and there is more out there. For sure, there is more to the Centurion story than WSI.

Just look at the thread this week about the Centurion TT-ish bike bought from a seller in Austria--who had several of them. It has Centurion 80s graphics just like the ones we know and was called a 'Turbo' with the exact same logo as in the 1984 WSI catalog...but it's definitely a late 80s bike and not at all the Turbo we know (and some of us love ).

Here's a recent thread from an Australian bike site about a guy who has picked up an 'old' Centurion, in fact labeled a Turbo 7000, and is thinking it's too good to turn into a SS. (Sound familiar?) The bike itself looks more like what we know as an Ironman or maybe a LeMans RS. (It also resembles that Austrian TT bike in having a Suntour Ole group.)
https://www.bicycles.net.au/forums/vi...p?f=12&t=37437

And here's a catalog c.1993 for German market Centurion bikes, long after WSI had switched over to the Diamondback name. The bikes themselves are models never seen in the US (though maybe someone can say whether the MTBs look like Diamondbacks) but there are familar model names like LeMans, Accordo, and...ulp...Equipe.

https://www.retrobike.co.uk/forum/gal...g2_itemId=3407

So what was going on? Was 'Centurion' a brand that WSI originated and licensed, or did a group of bike entrepreneurs get together and come up with the name and concepts then adapt them to their own home markets? I'll guess we'll never know, unless someone can talk with someone who was involved in Centurion back in the day. Until then...

btw: it's no great feat of scholarship to find this stuff out these days. Start a google alert for random terms like, oh, 'Centurion Turbo' and you'll be surprised what pops into your email box. Though it mostly has to do with a certain Cessna airplane.

frantik

^ maybe WSI/DB/Centurion just sold different bikes in the european market? car manufacturers do that all the time

that euro turbo is likely a WSI Centurion if it follows the same serial # scheme and graphics styles

frantik

actually, it looks like there is a completely different German company named Centurion:https://www.centurion.de/en_int/cms/1...turion_history and that is the company's logo posted by the OP

perhaps thats why WSI dropped Centurion in the first place?

RobbieTunes

Until I saw that 93 catalog, I figured it all ended in 1989.
Not sure, and only person I know that could shed light on it would be Alan Goldsmith, one of the forces at work in the 80's.

The newer Centurion carbon bikes, etc, have no relationship that I know. They certainly look pretty nice.

Chicago Al 

On the website of the German company, there's a 'history' pulldown, where you can see a pic of an 'Accordo GT,' an MTB from 1984, with the very familiar logos that WSI was using at the same time. Same model name as WSI used too, though for a completely different bike. Surely that's not a coincidence, and it doesn't make sense for one to have copied the other...what would be the benefit? I think the most likely thing is some degree of cooperation between the German company and WSI. Probably the ones that have turned up in Australia are imports from the US or Europe.

frantik

Sheldon says the name is unrelated: "Note that the Centurion name lives on in an unrelated bike brand from Denmark, and another unrelated brand from Germany."

I think the Accordo thing could be a very odd coincidence.. but a car company in Japan also chose a similar name for their car so it's not totally impossible.

Chicago Al 

I wish I'd been active here when Sheldon Brown used to contribute. I like his sense of humor and whole approach to cycling, and life for that matter. And I've learned a lot from his site. But his site covers a vast amount of stuff, often through aggregation from other sources and contributors, like Ashley Winthrop's research on Centurion, and can't be considered the last word on every bike-related subject. I'd take Sheldon's word on parts for my Raleigh Sports, for example, as that was a primary interest for him. Centurion was a peripheral topic, and a detail about overseas marketing is more peripheral still.

I have a query in to Centurion in Germany and another to Ashley, who I corresponded with after I got my Turbo a couple of years ago. He used to contribute here but hasn't posted in almost a year. I'll report back what I hear from either source.

frantik

*gasp* sheldon's not the final work on all things bike?!


based on the history of the German centurion company, and the artwork on their bikes in that 1993 catalog, I really don't think they have anything to do with WSI

however the foriegn market Turbo 7000 bikes that have been posted clearly look like WSI products