Chuck Schmidt's '59 Mercian

Every now and then I need to take a break from retro-grouching to do some retro-admiring. Today's subject for admiration comes from Chuck Schmidt, a vintage bike enthusiast who also runs the Velo-Retro site. Chuck's site is a great place to find reproductions of vintage bicycle posters, advertising materials, t-shirts, and more.

Regular readers know how much I love Mercian bikes, old and new - and that I have a small collection of them (I'm up to 8 complete bikes, plus one frameset). Well, Chuck's bike is one that any vintage bike fan would love to have - and would make any Mercian fans' knees get wobbly. It's a 1959 Superlight Road-Path, and it's a gem.

Chuck's bike has terrific original paint and decals. He says the color has been described as "Creme Pesto Sauce" but it is not a color currently offered in the Mercian color pallette (a shame, really). One of the things I'd like to point out is the lettering style used on the down tube. That is a pretty rare style that, as far as I can tell, was only used for a very short time - probably no more than a few years. Most other Mercians I've seen from the '50s tend to have "script" style lettering. In the early 60s, Mercian adopted the lettering style they currently use, which they call "gothic." The lettering on this bike bears a resemblance to the current gothic style, but with the addition of a shadow detail -- making it almost a transitional design between the older script and the current style. Searching the whole archives of the Mercian Cycles Flickr page, I could only find a couple other examples with that style down tube lettering, and they were from about the same timeframe as this bike.

The Superlight model is distinguished by its unique lugs that are cut away to the minimum, yet still display a certain ornate character. The lugs were all cut and filed by hand, and I don't think any other builders made anything quite like them. The model was quietly dropped from the Mercian lineup sometime in the late '90s -- probably about the time they started switching over to investment cast lugs.

Those minimalist-yet-fancy lugs are the detail that sets the Superlight apart. Notice that Chuck's bike also features an earlier version of the Mercian head tube crest, featuring World Champion colors and Olympic rings. According to their website, the company would switch to the current "The World Over - Globe" design in the early '60s, not long after this bike was built.

This may be the first Superlight - built
for Tom Crowther. Other than color
and decals, it has a lot in common with
Chuck Schmidt's bike. (Photo from
Hilary Stone's site)

This would have to be one of the earliest production examples of the Superlight model that one is likely to find. It's not clear exactly when the model was first introduced to the lineup, but the earliest catalog in which I've seen it was from 1963 where it was listed as "The New Superlight." (Mercian didn't put out new catalogs every year -- the next earliest catalog I've seen came out some time in the 1950s but doesn't mention this model). There is some evidence that the first Superlight may have been built in 1958, specially for Tom Crowther, who was one of the Mercian co-founders, so one can assume the model was probably offered to the public soon after. Pictures of that bike can be seen at ClassicLightweights, and it had apparently been sold previously through Hilary Stone's site, where more pictures and information can be found. Although Stone's description states that the Crowther bike has many of its original parts and its provenance can be verified, Stone did not specify original paint, and I do have some questions about whether the paint and decals on that bike are original since it has the later graphics. Maybe the Crowther bike had a repaint in the '60s?

This is probably my favorite part. I love how the painter added an extra little curl in the lug outlining just ahead of the binder. Notice how the original Superlight seat lug only wraps about 3/4 of the way around, and how the seat stays are brazed in directly to the back of the seat tube without reinforcement. Later-built bikes have a different seat lug design - one that wraps all the way around the seat tube, with an extension down the back to receive the seat stays. I don't know if there was a problem with these earlier ones breaking, but I'm sure that the later version was stronger. This version's prettier, though.

Just by way of comparison, here is the revised seat-lug from my own '73 Superlight. Still nice, but there's something awesome about the super-minimalist original version.

Chuck tells me that the original owner of this bike had welded a derailleur hanger onto the right rear fork end, which was then removed, returning it to the original state. You can see where some of the paint was lost on the lower half of the fork end as a result. The wheels are built with "BH" (British Hubs) aluminum hubs that are fixed-gear threaded on both sides. The rims are Super Champion Medaille d'Or tubulars (260 grams!). Holding the wheels in place are Gripfast wing nuts, though I'm told the bike now sports GB (that's "Gerry Burgess," not "Great Britain") wingnuts.

Appropriate-looking Philippe bars and stem, with some of the details picked out in red. The bar tape is vintage Gem plastic tape. Brakes are Weinmann 500. (Wanna start a "religion and politics" style of debate with vintage bike fans? Ask whether that front-brake-lever should be mounted on the left or the right!)

Keeping with a "French Lightweight" theme, the bike has a Stronglight crank with a 48-tooth ring. In this shot, you can also see the curly details cut into the bottom bracket shell. Fantastic.

Given the age, and the condition of this bike - and the fact that it is a very early example of a really special model, I'd call this one a very enviable bicycle.

Thanks, Chuck, for sharing the bike with us!