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TECH NEWS
Condor launch ltd edition World Series range of steel framesets
Lovers of hand built Italian steel frames wishing to avoid temptation should stop reading now because today Condor Cycles launch a limited edition range of lugged steel World Series framesets to celebrate company founder, Monty Young's birthday. Monty first opened the doors of the now legendary London shop in 1948 and since that time Condor has supported numerous British national, world and Olympic champions.
From the mid-Fifties that support came in the hands on shape of Monty driving the Condor Cycles service van to races up and down the country. The new range of frames celebrates the success of Condor supported riders at world level with a limited run of 150 framesets in five different combinations of white and one of the colours of cycling's world champion rainbow band. The frames are made from triple-butted lugged steel hand made in Italy. The design is based on the bikes used by Condor's professional track teams of the Sixties and Seventies and the package includes a matching World Series San Marco Concors saddle and seatpost, colour co-ordinating leather bar tape, headset - 1in naturally, a numbered commemorative booklet and a World Series cap.
Five colourways are matched by five different size options running from 49cm through 52, 55, 58 and topping out at 61 - and you can have the choice of either horizontal or vertical dropouts - although given their track team inspiration and from the promotional shots released by Condor geometry is going to be much more at the track inspired end of the scale. Condor's attention to detail means that the frames certainly build up in to a very elegant range of bikes.
The World Series go on sale today and if you've got £550 you can have one, but we're guessing that you'd better be quick
road.cc's founder and first editor, nowadays to be found riding a spreadsheet. Tony's journey in cycling media started in 1997 as production editor and then deputy editor of Total Bike, acting editor of Total Mountain Bike and then seven years as editor of Cycling Plus. He launched his first cycling website - the Cycling Plus Forum at the turn of the century. In 2006 he left C+ to head up the launch team for Bike Radar which he edited until 2008, when he co-launched the multi-award winning road.cc - finally handing on the reins in 2021 to Jack Sexty. His favourite ride is his ‘commute’ - which he does most days inc weekends and he’s been cycle-commuting since 1994. His favourite bikes are titanium and have disc brakes, though he'd like to own a carbon bike one day.
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15 comments
Simply cos since Condor stopped making their own frames they've always imported handbuilt Italian frames - they're a shop that's always been noted for a certain Italianess - I used to live across the road from their shop and I always thought it was an Italian business. There are probably just enough artisan builders left in northern Italy to mean it's still cost effective for Condor to source their frames from that part of the world. There just aren't the numbers of British framebuilders producing in the sorts of numbers and at the sorts of prices that an outfit like Condor would need. Plus a lot of the British builders that remain (well, the bigger names) are more associated with touring bikes than the sorts of sporting models that Condor tends to sell.
sod 'colourway' is there any reason why these frames had to be made in Italy and not by British frame builders???
The point on colourway is that it isn't a word made up by marketing or fashion types, it just happens to be used by them… and me. Seems to me all your problems are with it's associations with said marketing and fashion types - what's wrong with 'em?
Some of my best friends are marketing and fashion types
lovely people one and all, and 'colourway' is a perfectly functional and acceptable word - so I'll keep on using it.
doesn't she have any trainers?
it's true, "thankyou" is technically wrong, but "colourway"?
bikeylikey has a reasonable point: if the SOED hasn't got it, it probably is a bit bollocks, really - never mind your parvenu johnny-come-lately Chambers dictionaries!
My real objection to 'colourways' is this: when I read road.cc normally, i get to enjoy nice, clear, well-written stuff that doesn't make me focus on the wrong thing. I sat here and asked myself "what's a colourway?" My teenage niece had no idea, either ...
Anyway, thankyou (ahem) for listening!
maybe i'll think up some more. Geometryway? Componentryway?
crayons - please don't write 'thankyou' as one word. It's two words.
bikeylikey - 'cringeworthy'? is that in your dictionary?
allow yourself to get tied up in semantics and the perceived benefits of one perfectly acceptable and lucid word over another, and you'd never get any work done.
1. colourway
A term, used by trainer fashionistas, to describe a particular colour combination used in the design of an item of footwear. Also used by said cognoscenti to identify those in the know (obsessive seekers of elusive, very limited colourways) from mere mortals (those foolish enough to buy any old mass-produced colourway).
From 'The Urban Dictionary', online.
The 'Shorter Oxford Dictionary' is two huge volumes in small type, called 'Shorter' because it has a third fewer entries than the full 14 volume OED.
I'm still amazed that it's even in Chambers or Collins. Of course it's 'made up', all words are, but this is made up fairly recently by fashion or marketing types attempting to make up jargon to increase their clubbiness.
Dictionaries are 'retrospective', i.e. they define words already in the language, they aren't 'prescriptive', i.e. don't tell you what is permissable or not, that's up to the users, then dictionaries follow use. Marketing and fashion inventions like 'colourway' are objectionable to many people, whether they are in some dictionaries or not.
This is getting far from bikes! Love the Condor colour schemes, not sure about the 'retro' quill headsets. And if you wanted an 'Italian Classic' wouldn't you go for a Cinelli or Bianchi or something, rather than a London maker? Who is the 'target market'? What is the 'customer demographic'? (Objectionable marketing terms in quotes).
Well, it's in my 15 year-old edition of Chambers and my 30 year old Collins Concise so hardly a new or made up. Doubt that it was a new entrant even 30 years ago + there's all the time a word needs to be in use before it even gets in.
Maybe you need a longer dictionary
I like the coloured bits.
colour scheme?
Please stop using the word 'colourway'
Five colours are matched by.... works just fine thankyou
Ah, but 'colourway' refers to a combination of colours, for example the blue and white in the pic, rather than the blue itself
And it's in the dictionary
What dictionary is that then? I thought 'I'd be amazed if that's in the dictionary', so amazed I actually got up and got the Oxford Shorter English Dictionary off the shelf. The Oxford series is pretty definitive, I'd say. It is not in there.
I agree with Simon. As far as I'm aware, it's a cringeworthy commercial newly invented shopping word, supposed to sound cool or something. What's wrong with Colour scheme?
Is it just me or does the whole celebration of Condor's 'heritage' just seem a bit pointless with italian factory made frames? Got to keep the Londoners spending though I guess.