whats this??

[willcee]

A good friend called this evening and from a Sainsbury orange plastic bag pulled this small model steel race shaped machine.it belonged to a friend of his who recently passed and his lady is tidying up her late husbands effects.. so he brought it over to me thinking i could probably place it for him.. no money was mentioned... i dont wish to talk about that on here just want to know if anybody has seen the same and if i can find out more about it perhaps it would be useful should a new person show interest.. ie where it was made , era of build.. or was it a handy guy around steel pipe.. the wheels are 40 spoke.. theres no chain adjustment or working brakes..cheers will

[Sum]

It looks similar to this here:
https://www.carousell.sg/p/vintage-meta ... 275657231/

This one on Alibaba is going for beer money apiece, but only if you buy a 100 of them!:
https://s.alicdn.com/@sc04/kf/A58849398 ... webp=close
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/ ... 71070.html

[willcee]

hello and thanks.. i had an idea what i would wish to pay for the machine so will move it to a sale section to see what the interest would be..will

[BobSweet]

Maybe it is a prize in a competition. Win a bike, but when your winnings arrive it is only 2" high.

[Morzedec]

A very long time ago one of our companies used to import these models. Singles, tandems, trikes, and 'sixers', all of different sizes from almost tiny ones to those about 20cm tall. The 'Boss' has one that I gave her about 20 years ago, still mint and boxed, and that's where it will stay!

From a distant memory we had to buy 500 of each model to get free carriage - from China, of course, costing us about three or four thousand pounds for each completed order Similar, if different and rougher, cycle models came from Indonesia, being used as 'makeweights' in boxes of imported furniture - ie, if the furniture did not total their allowed carriage weight they chucked in a couple of dozen bikes to make the total up!

We first found this out when importing the furniture (bare frames for upholstering) and got a few free bikes as well, but we soon started to ask for the bikes on their own. And then, all of a sudden, the Trade stopped - and we never did find out why.

Moving on, there was a small company in Brazil (of all places!) that made up bike models in wire, and we bought those as well - I've still got a couple of those, tucked away somewhere, along with all sorts of other cycling memorabilia collected over a lifetime. Time now, perhaps to start unloading them, if the 'Boss' will let me.

Happy Days!

[Brucey]

I would say this vaguely whiffs of the 1960s; the reason I say this is because it appears to be a fairly faithful model of a converted roadster. Typically this type of bike would, if it is to retain the original brake levers, be fitted with steel drops in the smaller 22.2mm size. The brake calipers are centre-pulls, de riguer in the 1960s. I have seen a curved stem like that; I think the bike might have been from Germany. This,together with the brakes (which appear too be connected the 'wrong way round' for the UK) make me think the model might have originally come from Germany.

[willcee]

BRUCE i hope you're keeping well, interesting what you say about its birthplace , given that the hun were very accomplished toy and model makers i would say that this wouldnt just reflect that skill set.. will

[Brucey]

I suspect that someone (an amateur) whiled away cold winter evenings making this in a basement.