Raleigh Europa variants

OldFrank

Retro Guru
I remember a mate had Europa, when i were a lad. It looked like a heavy basic bike. Not so different from the Arena. But recently I've seen what seem to be higher specced Europas, did they upgrade them ? Were they always pretty basic?
 
The Europa's we sold were just basic bikes but with the Raleigh Team colours slightly better kit than the arena........long time ago but the early ones came with a yellow head tube wheras the real team colous had a black headtube, but may be wrong. Team colours looked good so sold easier than the arena's which were usually a light metallic blue.

Anything fancier was a Team record variant IIRC.

Shaun
 
What about the Europa 12? That seems to have had a black headtube. Was it any better?

Do you know anything about the Joop Zoetemelk? Was that a Europa variant?
 
My first bike was a Raleigh Europa 5 speed & heavy as hell but got me back & forth to school everyday
 
The first Europas were Carlton truwell frames, in team colours with yellow head tube. The ten speed Europa was then based on the ubiquitous Raleigh Racer frame,no rear brake bridge or wrap over stays but Olympic Rings became part of the graphics with the team ralaigh logo moved on to the top tubeEventually the frame set became the standard Cadet/Winner frame with triple top tube cable guides.These also became 12 speed.The team Raleigh graphic moved back to the down tube and the Europa logo became a small signature type design on the top tube. The " Joop" edition was based on the second series.
Some of the last Europas were built with 501 frame tubes.
Whatever the version they always looked much faster than al the other Raleigh versions!
 
Only seen two joops both were later spec with the Joop sig replacing the Europa top tube badge.
I think also the Europa could qualify as Raleigh's most televised bike thanks to it featuring in the "Superstars" BBC programme, just google " Kevin Keegan bike crash"
 
Damn! I loved my Joop! I knew i should have kept it. Though it was nearly 30 years ago.

They don't come up often. :(
 
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