Pelizzoli, Ciöcc, Gion Italia and John the Star U.S.A.

I posted a reply in a Ciöcc thread over at Bike Forums and thought it should be on here as well. I typically go in the opposite direction but the content from a long phone call was too good to pass up. Here is the post in all it's glory...

Yes, that's my old video of Giovanni finally pronouncing and translating his nickname. I just got off the phone with him and after a LONG conversation, have a few more things I can offer... I hope ANY of it is useful or at the very least, interesting!

Gio was born in 1942 and at 25 built his first Ciöcc in 1967.

Here's an interesting one... my friend Claudio wasn't the first Corti to win aboard a Ciöcc. His brother Mario won the Vuelta de la Juventud Mexicana in 1971 for C.S. Fiat as a dilettante. Check out this image...

The Corti's, like Giovanni, were born in Curno. The first Ciöcc frames had just a "C" decoration, taken not from the nickname, but from the town Curno, which then merged with two other locales to form Curdomo, a model name used today under the brand Pelizzoli. Evidently, as Italian towns expanded there was plenty of name shuffling - reminds me of the direction Iowa schools systems are going!

Branding: The "C" with tail was inspired when Giovanni saw a Cimatti model with a similar tail. His new logo was met with consternation by the moto brand but was easily explained away in that his tail was curved while theirs was straight. When asked the exact timing of this, his only recollection is "Certainly after Claudio's win". Take that with a grain of salt though. I have seen mixed frames where the seat stay cap has no tail while the original decals do. Italian inventory planning of small raw materials was never precise!



Iper: Yes, literal translation is Hyper, supposedly "better" than Super. BUT - this name was applied to bikes sold in a local Curno/Bergamo bike shop owned by a close friend of Giovanni's! If you see this on a bike... I suggest buying it, as it represents a very narrow production range for a local marketer, hence rare and likely of top production - reputation locally was everything!



He names his Golden period of Ciöcc as 77-81 or 82... top of his head, he can't remember exactly when it was sold! He still retains the rights to the brands Gion Italia (Italian spelling of John) and John the Star U.S.A. I've been in his shop a number of times and have literally spent weekends there fishing around his piles of old junk frames - I've never seen evidence of a John the Star frame. It also deserves a good story, and there is one...

He got a phone call from a company in Milan threatening to file a suit against his use of U.S.A. Not sure the legal validity of such a case - we're talking Italy here. Giovanni replies with a question... 'well, what do you think U.S.A. means?!?' and the reply is obvious, followed by 'well, what do YOU think it means?' to which Giovanni replies his unassailable use of "Unione Saldatori Artigiani". The agent goes silent and the Union of Artisan Framebuilders never hears another word about the case.



The crew...

Hope this was interesting!

Getting The Ciöcc Up And Running

Got the Ciöcc back up and running thanks to eBay and a pretty beat up Concor saddle. I also threw on a set of "new vintage" wheels (if that makes any sense) built up around a set of polished de-badged Sun clinchers and some 28mm Clements. I'm getting more and more away from all those old tubies just from a cost and practicality standpoint. I still have way too many, but more and more am hitting gravel aboard new wide clinchers.

Here's how she looks at the entrance to one of my local B-roads!

Ciöcc Finally Getting the Miles In

Finally got the chance to shoot the Ciöcc recently. I've been riding ALL the old Italian steel lately, especially on the local gravel (ghiaia). This week, at the end of one such ride, the Selle San Marco Concor shown here snapped at the rail. Luckily I only had six or seven miles to home, standing all the way. At that point, it was time to wash this baby and get it out to photo it in this incarnation, as it may be a while before it returns to this somewhat period correct look (eBay has only a few 3TTT suede saddles listed, and they go for north of $150).

This is the rare pre-CPSC era Ciöcc that was built for Milanese sprinter Musone (his name stamped into the rear dropouts) and a very rare team frame built with Nervex lugs. I documented its restoration on youtube, which to date has 34,000 views mainly because Giovanni can be heard pronouncing and explaining the name Ciöcc. Comments have always asked to see the finished product, so I'll link them back to this post.

My last trip to Giovanni's shop led me to the guy that most likely built these team frames. He remembered the vintage and told me a few things that had I scribbled on a note somewhere around here.

The bike rides great. Now, I just need to find a new saddle...

As I found it...

That great Musone dropout

52 YEARS Ago The Human Locomotive Ran Out of Coal...

This Radiocorsa tribute ran two years ago. OK, so it didn't take me the whole time to do the subtitles, but things sort of rand away from me... here it is.

My l'Eroica Bike For 2012 Has Paint!

It's been almost a year now, but my 1930's Airolg that I HOPE to ride in Tuscany this year finally has some color, albeit black and white. Ciöcc ran into a snag with the 70-year-old decals, so it had to go to an expert... Enzo!

The plan is for him to decal it, pick up the parts from the chrome guy, and ship back to me to build the wood rims into wheels and then assemble the Vittoria Margherita shifter in time to work out the kinks and put a few LONG rides on it for reliability testing prior to l'Eroica!

before...

after.

A king's crown.

A Bike... For Life

My last weekend trip to Ciöcc's shop was inspiring again. The guy is so full of life, how could you not appreciate his joy for living? A true master of the old world frame building craft, Giovanni is still innovating and coming out with great new products. The latest of these is the Aeta, which in the Bergamascan dialect means 'Life'. Appropriately named, as this is a bike you would buy and keep for life (and the price tag requires that this purchase isn't an impulse buy).

Could this potentially be the next Cicli Masini model? I can picture one of these stainless steel beauties in a blue/yellow version, and Ciöcc says he'd be more than proud to put his name on one for me! He took me out for lunch in order to help translate to a couple of Korean customers (no, I haven't taken up Korean but they spoke very good English, and share a passion for old-school steel).

As one member of a message board recently stated, a bike like this doesn't compete with other competition bikes, but with other luxury purchase items like that new Ducati or IWB. What are your thoughts? I certainly see the average value of bikes at the local crit or cross race skyrocketing! More on that next...

ps - Post #200! Oh yeah! Thanks to all of you who visit and read my ramblings!

The Galmozzi Cambio Corsa is Finished!

Ciöcc finished the work on this quite a while ago, but I just now finished it to the point that I was ready to take it to the studio for photos. I'm real happy with how it turned out. There have been a lot of Galmozzi's popping up lately, but still none this early.

Once again, here's the video of the restoration and a little bit at the end with Angelo Galmozzi.

Ciöcc Restores the Cicli Masini, SN 1

It took a year... planning, parts collecting, weekend trips to Ciöcc's shop to work on it, but the final result was worth it. Here is a look at the work that went into the Cicli Masini, serial number one, plus some pre-l'Eroica beauty shots!

It'll never get this clean again!

Every bike needs a strong head tube badge. I think this turned out great.

Spinning spokes just behind your shift lever... what could go wrong?!?

Here's the business end of the Paris-Roubaix shifter.

Galmozzi Restoration!

The 1950 Galmozzi with Cambio Corsa is ready for its maiden voyage finally! It was quite a long process, like all restorations, but well worth it. I've added a couple more details since then, namely the period-correct Columbus decal and the non-period-correct black bar tape with red stitching!

The man towards the end is Angelo Galmozzi, son of Francesco (a co-founder of Gloria and considered one of the best Italian framebuilders of the early days), who took the reigns from his father until finally closing the company in the mid-70's. He is full of stories from "back in the day" and even more from BEFORE "back in the day". He's quite the Italian historian, and is quick to let his political ideas seep into and eventually become major players in his recounting of growing up in Italy. He was impressed with the bike, and even more so by the Galmozzi t-shirt I was sporting under my Lambo sweatshirt! I guess I need to get another one on order!

My Ciöcc Restoration Project, Part 1

There was always something unknown about Ciöcc bicycles back in Iowa in the '80s. There would always be a few on RAGBRAI. Beautiful bikes that nobody knew anything about, starting with how to pronounce the name. I mean, c'mon... and umlaut in an Italian word? And finishing with two 'C's'? I heard all types of pronunciations, just that NONE of them were right!

As to the meaning, even HE isn't too willing to give it up. Check online and you'll see explanations that it is local dialect for "poker-faced", "drunkard", "gambler" and other variations. There's even a story that Ciöcc bikes were birthed over a card game among Giovanni, Colnago (the clubs), De Rosa (the hearts) and Pinarello (the spades for some reason). I've even read that Giovanni is now dead and that his sons run the business (not true of course). Oh well, perhaps the imagination of the internet.

I was lucky enough to mention this to Gian Carlo, one of my ex team mechanics. GCB happens to be good friends with Ciöcc himself and made a call to him one day while we had lunch in Milan. An hour later and I was at his shop, drooling over an old frame from an ex amateur named Musone. It had to be mine. Sure, it was a bit rusty and needed refinishing, but the price was right and the old maestro was just as interested in seeing it brought back to life.

As for the man himself, much like Irio Tommasini - another maestro I've been lucky to get to know - Giovanni is immensely proud of the work he has done over the years. He took me to his desk and we spent an hour going through his old photos and designs. He explained to me all the innovations he made through the years, and the countless victories achieved on his frames, including that of my good friend Claudio Corti. Claudio won his 1977 U23 World Championship aboard a Ciöcc in San Cristobal, Venezuela. Those who remember seeing Ciöcc frames from the 80's will remember that the San Cristobal was the name on most of the imported models. Soon, I'll finally have my own Ciöcc... a 1973 model of a successful amateur racer from Milan... Musone! Now if I can just finish my search for the perfect Nuovo Record group...