I have 1 retro road and have been through 3 to get there. I like the late 80's/early 90's Raleighs and Peugeots and originally bought a Quadra that was a bitsa and converted it to mostly original spec but it was too small for me (54.5cm) and having the saddle up and the stem down hurt my wrists badly. I took a punt on a Raleigh Triathlon which was a larger frame size (60cm) but it was too big. Unable to find a 57cm Raleigh for reasonable money I found a Peugeot 531 Altus on here that is in lovely condition and the right size and cost me £200. I plan to do a fair bit of road riding with Skyride over the summer and will use this.
What I can say is that personally I would be looking at the Raleigh Lightweight Range (531 and 653 frames), Peugeot (command a bit more money usually), Holdsworth or Claud Butler post 1987 (to avoid the L'Eroica tax) until about 1991 as they are nicely handmade with quality Steel tubes, have a lot of the modern quality features (post 1990 brings in dual pivot brakes) like SLR, Index gears (essential on Suicide levers), Hyperglide and Aero levers and are reasonably priced. You can for a little over £100 pickup a Triathlon, Quadra, Delta, Ritmo, Veloce, Strada, Elix or Corsa which are all handmade 531 Lightweight frames (some have 531 forks) with Varying quality of components from Exage to 105, so none of it Gash.
Carl.
