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Age of Innocence, Age of Elegance

By Bob Freeman

Back in 1978, when I was already in the bike industry but still couldn’t afford a new top end racing bike, I came across a nice 1973 Colnago Super, one of the bikes the stars rode. Eddy Merckx, Giuseppe Saronni, Gianni Motta, Gianbattista Baronchelli, the Molteni Team and the SCIC Team, all rode a Colnago at times. I had to have one. Beat up and scratched, at $500 it was still a good deal. I rode it and loved it. By the early ‘80s, though, I had newer racing bikes, including a beautiful new Davidson and a Guerciotti track bike. Then came the new Italian Massy. The Colnago had to go. I sold it to a friend, as a beater backup bike. He rode it well and often, for the next 20 years or so. A couple years ago he announced he was going to dumpsterize the frame unless I wanted it, so what the heck, I took it off his hands. It wasn’t too much worse off than when I owned it, but it certainly wasn’t in great shape. I had plenty of projects on my hands at the time, so I hung it up for a year or so. This past winter I decided it was time to resurrect my old friend.

Photo courtesy of Bob Freeman

What the Colnago looks like today.

Assessing the frame, I realized it had a few dents, some slight wrinkles in the top and down tubes from a front-ender, and a crushed seat boss — not bad, and little to no rust, so it was a good restoration candidate. I used blocks to smooth out the wrinkles, and pulled the frame a bit back into form and put it on the alignment table to make sure it would still be straight. My very handy framebuilder, Will, rebuilt the crushed seat boss and filled a couple dents. It started to look pretty good. Then, this past spring, my talented painter, Ryan, painted it the electric blue like the one I always wanted back in the ‘70s. It has a stunning paint job, and it’s better than new. Digging through my stash of classic parts, I produced a mint 1973 crankset, some very nice large flange hubs dated 1973, a Nuovo Record rear derailleur stamped 1972 (alright, pretend it was sitting on the shelf for a year back then), and the appropriate front derailleur, headset, milled and polished seat post, and pedals. Last year I found the perfect Cinelli Colnago-pantographed stem and I polished and repainted the engravings. Some shiny new 270-gram Fiamme Yellow label rims built up into my favorite race wheels and a new old stock Italia Super Professional seat finished it off. I don’t just have my old Colnago back; I have the one I always wanted!

Ernesto Colnago too discovered that the bike boom was something he could cash in on. He made and sold more and more of his race-worthy bikes. By about 1980, framebuilding was making strides towards more efficiency, but that meant less handwork on the frames. They started to employ equipment to do the job that used to be hand filing, and the frames were never again as elegant. To his credit, Colnago did continue making steel frames for many years after they became less than the first choice of racers. And he even made some with fancier than normal lugs, and multi-shaped tubing. Bravo, Ernesto, for keeping the flame alive.

Photo courtesy of Bob Freeman

Bob Freeman is a former Cascade Bicycle Club president, Bikecentennial Transamerica tour leader and racer who has spent his entire working career in the bike industry. In 1983 he co-founded Elliott Bay Bicycles in Seattle, where Davidson Handbuilt Bicycles are made. His passion is vintage bikes, and he is constantly finding, restoring, showing, and riding them, as well as doing many restorations for customers.