The Re-Vintage Project
I have just taken delivery of a £2.5k road bike from a large manufacturer. It has a carbon frame and forks, the latest spec, and a whole heap of gadgets and gizmos built into the bike to make it lighter and stiffer, yet more comfortable. It’s beautiful, it really is. Well, in a sea of carbon road bikes all boasting similar marketing speal, it is. Yet, when I take it out for a ride, I’m met with a mixed bag of compliments and insults. Everyone has an opinion on it, whether they’ve ridden it or not, and they seem to either love it or hate it. Back at home, I have a Merckx Corsa Extra, circa 1996, and when that gets out in the wild, nobody says “yeah, but I heard they’re not as good as …[insert AN Other brand here]”.
About My Merckx
If you don’t know much about Merckx, all you need to know is that it was set up by an absolute legend. Eddy Merckx won the Tour de France five times, and is still considered the greatest rider that ever lived. My Merckx is branded with stick-on decals boldly stating “E. Merckx” in white with a gold border. It screams Eddy on the downtube as well as in its grace and lines. Merckx Cycles are still around today, but they’ve dropped the “E” and look just like any other bike brand; carbon, chunky and running to keep up with the latest roadie fad. Mine is far from modern. Not only are the gears less than normal these days, there is not one bit of carbon fibre in sight (shock horror!), and the wheels are 650b. Yep, that’s right, they’re tiny. And so is the bike. It’s how a circa 46cm frame is looking so well proportioned.
On the underside of every steel Eddy Merckx you will find a set of numbers and letters that all mean something. I was lucky enough to have received this bike as a gift after a very dear friend, and the founder of Bikesoup, passed away in 2015. After a touch of research I was able to decipher the bottom bracket code to find out that this particular Corsa Extra was custom built for a professional in 1996. The spec was a mix of Shimano 600 and Dura Ace, with some of the early forms of Shimano dual-control levers (where shifting and breaking can occur in one place) attached to some rather ugly 90’s triathlon bars. This was presumably why the bike had 650b wheels as, other than being astride a tiny frame, small wheels were quite popular amongst triathletes in the 90s, as they were said to accelerate better. I can confirm they do, but be prepared to continue accelerating for the rest of your journey! More on that later.
This particular Eddy Merckx struck a chord with me. It was ugly, for sure, but there was a certain charm about it if I covered up those awful bars. Though the frame had almost certainly been intended for modern gearing, there were still the workings to install external shifters on the down-tube. At the time I received the bike, I was entered into the Eroica Britannia, and was without a bike. My dear friend, Antony, had promised to source me something vintage, and following his passing, this was found, recently purchased, among his stuff. I am sure it was for me. No-one else would fit it, not least him at over six foot tall. It had to have been the start of a project. So, in memory, I set about doing what I thought he had intended; re-vintaging this nineties abomination into the beautiful piece of art you see today.
The Re-Vintaged Corsa Extra
After a bit more digging around the Eddy Merckx team history in search of inspiration for my outfit I found a set of photos that felt like Eroica fate. The team looked like they were actors in an 80s detective movie with bad hair and big sunglasses. Their team kit sported the usual ‘Lotto’ and ‘Merckx’ branding, but the colours were not what I was used to. Thinking of Eddy Merckx conjures up crackled footage of a tanned cyclist in a white merino jersey with world champion stripes astride a brown steel bike. What I had found was a bunch of pasty Europeans in a rainbow of pink and yellow colours astride equally colourful bikes. These colours spanned from 1985-1988 for Lotto Cycling. Albeit slightly worn, the photos of the 1987 team looked familiar. That dark off-pink was pretty unmistakeable, and couldn’t have been replicated coincidently. It is quite possible that my Corsa Extra was a ten-year anniversary colour, or at least a nod to the team on the same year that Marc Sergeant won the fifth stage of the Tour de France; his and the teams’ first stage victory (watch the win here).
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