1975 Crescent Pepita Professional 320 De Luxe

BACKGROUND / PURCHASE CONSIDERATIONS:

This particular project fairly jumped into my lap by virtue of an offer made to members of the Classic Rendezvous List back in October of 2007. Within that succinct "For Sale" posting, I saw an opportunity to purchase a rather enigmatic 1970’s vintage lightweight which happened to be appropriately sized for my personage at 61 cm, and to do so at what I thought to be a most reasonable price. But the real hook in said offering was the tag line following the stated price as required in that forum - "From Sweden With Love". If you happened to be a young male with at least a passing interest in cycling during the decade of the 1970’s, the odds are pretty good that you well remember Crescent bicycles, or at the very least their distinctive advertising campaign which prominently featured a fetching blonde poised atop one of their machines (...the place where I once worked did not even carry the Crescent line of bicycles, and yet we had one of their posters pinned up in the back of the repair shop - in essence, it was a velo version of that wildly famous Farrah Fawcett poster that would debut only a couple of years later).

INITIAL INSPECTION / REFURBISHING PLANS:

While this was purchased and received as a complete bicycle, I almost immediately set about stripping it down to a bare frameset and disposing of the vast majority of its comonentry because it was either not what would have originally been affixed to this particular bike and/or it did not suit my intentions for same. Indeed, prior to even having taken possession of this machine, I had already formulated my own plans for this large "orange beast". In consideration of the no-nonsense, utilitarian in nature, criterium / time trial orientation for which higher end Crescent bicycles were best suited, it was my desire to affect what one might well consider a true vintage "poseur" - a bicycle that would have the appearance of being somewhat of a purpose built competition machine without going so far as to preclude it from actually being viable for regular duties of a much more casual intent. The truth of the matter is that at my age and after having shattered an ankle a few years back wherein my orthopedic surgeon is amazed that I am able to even walk properly once again (...multiple bone fractures plus a soft tissue trifecta of sorts whereby I managed to completely tear of all three interior ligaments, all three anterior ligaments, and my Achilles tendon at both the plantar and calf - ouch!), my competitive days which were comprised of mostly merely modest accomplishment anyway are LONG behind me now. Still, I find that vigorously riding a bike, most especially a vintage one, is the most pleasurable and healthy way I know to almost magically transport oneself back to the simplicity and innocence of youth - almost as if the bicycle itself were some sort of supernatural time machine.

GOOD NEWS - BAD NEWS / A BIT OF CRESCENT HISTORY:

Crescent’s legitimate claim to sport the "VÄRLDSMÄSTARCYKELN" or "WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP BICYCLE" verbiage along the top tube of their finer models stems from the accomplishments of both Harry Snell who captured the Men’s Amateur Road Race title at Valkenburg aan de Geul in 1948, as well as the four Pettersson brothers (...Tomas, Erik, Gösta, and Sture) from Värgärda, Sweden who managed to claim three consecutive World Amateur Cycling Championship titles in 100 km Team Time Trial competition from 1967 through 1969 while riding for Crescent / MCB (...they also collectively took home the Silver medal at the 1968 Mexico Olympics for Men’s Team Time Trial). And despite that fact that Gösta Pettersson was known to have placed third in the 1970 Tour de France and won outright the both the 1970 Tour de Romandie and 1971 Giro d’Italia while riding a Masi disguised as a Monarch, the earlier achievements of the Pettersson brothers while they were all still amateurs, indeed, were realized astride genuine Swedish built Crescent / MCB bicycles.

Knowing that the top tube of my particular Crescent model 320 was sorely in need of repainting, I contacted archivist James Johansson at Crescent Cycle Works of Sweden (...which is now part of Cycleurope and the Grimaldi Industri group that also holds rights to the brands Bianchi, DBS, Gitane, Everton, Kildemoes, Legnano, Monark, and Puch among others) in hopes of procuring a proper set of replacement decals. In the course of our telephone conversations, I learned that all of the older decal sets which had previously been kept in stock at the factory were THROWN INTO THE PROVERBIAL TRASH BIN coincident to Crescent moving production of their racing oriented bicycles from Varberg in Sweden down to the much larger and more modern Bianchi plant in Treviglio, Italy back in 2005 (...commuter and city bikes, hybrids, children’s, and other styles are apparently still manufactured in Varberg - just not any Crescent sport bikes). Mr. Johansson also informed me that the company was already making preliminary preparations for celebration of its centennial anniversary commencing in April of 2008, and that should I be willing and able to provide him with high quality digital photographs of my own Crescent Pepita Professional De Luxe 320 in a completed state prior to that date, he would very much like to use them in some of the commemorative printed materials. Alas, circumstances beyond my immediate control conspired so as to prevent me from being able to finish this project within such an ambitious timeframe.