Alpina bikes of South Africa

[faulty]

Re:

Hi Guys,
sorry to bring back an old post as my first.

Alpina and Cosmos Bicycles where made in Vereeniging, Gauteng by Anthony Immelman with Reynolds Tubing, i am led to belive they still own the tooling to manufacture them.

Alpina bicycles was a division of the now well known biggest largest privately owned vehicle parts manufacturer in Southern Hemisphere.

Alpina also made cycle clothing and when the opportunity opened for them to make seat covers they jumped, they also do other plastic parts both molded and extruded for GM, BMW and others.

A few years back, around 2011 i rang Gary, the brother running the business and he mentioned we may be able to put something together for the tooling but i never got round to it and left SA to live in NZ.

fantastic track bikes in the day, i own a couple still to this day with one fully restored in SA colours.

 

[dirttorpedo]

I bet if you went to Eroica South Africa you'd see some nice ones.

 

[BigFoz]

Re:

WRT to Alpinas, back in the (far distant) day I recall them being the weapon of choice of chaps who couldn't afford Peugeots etc for road racing, and were a reasonable alternative. (I used a Carlton Pro). There was another totally SA brand too, whose name escapes. Mind you, a good number of the P-Jos, Raleighs and Carltons were locally made too. I don't recall the Carlton Pro or Raleigh Pro being locally made models - they usually had unique names like "Rapport" (Peugeot Rapport - named after the national tour) There were some pretty reasonable frame builders around SA in the '70s / '80s and lots of stuff was being made under licence. Peugeot were king of the racing scene and had an official trade team. Robbie MacIntosh raced for them, and Alan van Heerden for the other local firm I can't remember. They pretty much ruled SA Pro cycling at the time, and I think both came over to Europe, though due to apartheid, had very limited careers outside of SA.