Vintage Bikes of the Week: Meet The Condors
This is a special one, for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, as you can see there are two bikes of the week. How dare we? Well, because they came as a pair. Which brings us on to the second reason...
These bikes belonged to a man named Eddie Cook. A man who sadly we didn't get the chance to meet; a story that's all too familiar to us. The nature of what we do means that sometimes we buy bikes from family members who are faced with the horrible job of moving personal possessions after losing loved ones.
This was one of those scenarios.
It's always a difficult thing to have to deal with, but it's also important for us to ensure that the belongings live on, especially when they meant so much to the original owner.
Eddie was a life-long cycling fanatic and actually a very important figure in British cycling, in 1986 Eddie & Percy Stallard (founder of the British League of Racing Cyclists) co-founded The League of Veteran Racing Cyclists. As a non-cycling side-note, he was also editor-in-chief of the British Jazz magazine, Jazz Journal from 1982-2009.
Eddie was also a former member of the Crescent C.C., Brentwood R.C. and the Hainault R.C. Seen here in black & white racing for Hainault Roads Club.
So here we have Eddie's pride & joy, in the form of two Condors. He obviously had an affinity to the great London company, and rightly so.
The earliest of the two bikes dates back to 1986, built from lightweight Reynolds 531 Competition tubing to a traditional lugged design, and the younger brother was born in 1995 from Reynolds 853 tubing (which had just been introduced to the world), this one built using a combination of beautiful fillet brazing & lugged construction.
They're both a great representation of classic racing bikes that have been both well used & well loved. Eddie obviously took great care of his bicycles, we could tell this when we visited his house & garage where they were kept. Both bikes are exactly as Eddie had ridden them, configured just how he liked them, in fact the '86 Condor still has his cycle computer setup.
You can see both bikes in full detail here and here, or scroll down for a few snaps of them together, back out on the streets of London.
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