Falcon Bike Vintage

[scooter]

Re:

Here some pics of my Falcon Olympic . It hasn’t got the wrap around seat stay like the one in the advert but it has got - good rusty bits, plenty of wear & lots of patiiiiiiiiiiiina !
Weighs in at - 2.8kg F&F

 

[Midlife]

That's a much later Olympic. . It's the fork crown, plate dropouts and lack of lamp boss that makes the OP bike interesting........or typically Falcon lol

 

[scooter]

Re:

What age do you think ?

 

[Midlife]

Looks late 60's to me.

 

[Midlife]

Looks late 60's to me. Trying to think when they moved to Brigg in Lincolnshire

 

[vcballbat]

Re:

It's the same bike in the road test which is dated August 1975 and has later upgrades to more of a tourer. Looks like the same colour as specified in the road test...Candy Apple Red and Italian style fork.

 

[jim haseltine]

It's certainly earlier than the 1980s and looks like it started life as an Olympic.

I started work for Falcon in the Brigg factory in 1982 if I remember correctly. Wikipedia is both misleading or just plain wrong on a lot of the Falcon cycles info. The 'new factory' in Brigg was new to the group, it wasn't a new factory, I think it had been used by a garment manufacturer before Falcon moved there in around 1980 - prior to that Falcons were made in the Elswick factory in Barton-upon-Humber.
Anyway, no matter. Pretty easy way to identify the era of a frame is from the head badge - very, very few frames built in the Brigg factory had riveted head badges - I'd go as far as saying that none did, with the one or two really class Falcons frames built around then (I remember a matched pair of road and track bikes with copper plated frames) probably coming out of Harry Quinn's frame shop which was at the time owned by the brother of Ernie Clements, Falcon's general manager.
The factory was demolished in around 2011 and as far as I know the site has been unused except for bulk storage of aggregates and the like since then.

 

[Bigplanetman]

My mother says he bought a bike in April of 1974. Is it reasonable to think this bike would be available in the US at that time?

 

[jim haseltine]

It's likely. In the 1970s the USA was Falcon's biggest market, both for it's own label bikes (as in Falcon and Coventry-Eagle) and cheaper models sold under the Eddy Merckx brand.

 

[Old Ned]

They must have been building some top-end frames at Brigg in the 80's. A mate was delivering to a factory in Brigg a few years ago and got talking to the forklift truck driver who said he worked for Frank Clements at the factory, eventually ending up as a frame builder - and 753 accredited. One of his jobs was to go the Humberside Airport, pick up a French bloke, bring him back to the factory and sort out his frame requirements so he could build him a couple. The French bloke was rather arrogant, wore wire rim specs and had a pony tail. I wonder who that could have been..............