A festive Bike at Bedtime: Steve’s 1984 Concorde Astore

“Big Brother is watching you”; “Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth”, wrote George Orwell in his (arguably eerily prophetic), 1948 dystopian fiction book Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Meanwhile, Band Aid topped the UK Christmas singles charts in 1984 with ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’. For me, that year was all about the Concorde Astore frame that I’d just treated myself to for Christmas.

The supersonic flight of Concorde

For those of a vintage bold (and old) enough to remember the high-flying supersonic Concorde planes, and also that long forgotten cheap fizzy plonk of the same name, Concorde triggers a few memory switches to the flickering, sometimes confusing, bright, and occasionally marred glory days of the bike brand.

Concorde bikes first rode out in the 1970s, as a range of bikes made for and sold by a Dutch cycling importer and distributor. These were steel bikes, famous for their flamboyant paint jobs. Most of the high-end models, and the early frames, were designed and made in Italy by reputable brands such as Ciocc and Billato, with Belgian builders Martelly also joining the supply chain later. From there they were shipped to Concorde’s own paint shop in Gavere, Belgium.

It was a strange old marriage of cycling cultures, which gave the frames a distinctly Italian flare in design, handling and detail, which was topped off with some of the best paint jobs around at the time.

Although Concorde had sponsored smaller teams in the past, at the time I first came across them they were little known in the UK. From 1986-92 they came in as bike sponsor for the infamous PDM team, which is when they really became mainstream and popular globally. With riders such as Sean Kelly, Greg Lemond, Raul Alcala, and the lanky and curious Dutch duo of Steven Rooks and Gert-Jan Theunisse riding them to numerous victories, it’s no wonder.

Then came that fateful day at the 1991 Tour de France, when the entire PDM team fell ill with a mysterious illness, said to be salmonella poisoning. PDM immediately left the race under a dark cloud of doping suspicion.

Concorde continued selling bikes until around 2009, and in 2012 their owners went out of business.

The brand was acquired by another company and somewhat resurrected in 2015, but nothing more was seen of these once glorious bikes after around 2018.

The silver machine becomes a broken dream

For most of my teen racing years I’d been on my old Harry Quinn, though it was time for a change and chic spruce up, which came in the form a silver Concorde Astore.

After selling my old bike at the end of the season, I managed to scrape a little cash together. Concorde frames started appearing in the local bike shop a year earlier, brought in by the magical Tiger Sports van. They were becoming the new cool cats, with their lovely chrome forks, fancy Italian looks, and mysterious pre-PDM fame origins. I had my eyes on a ruby red coloured Aquila frame, though my small handful of green just wouldn’t stretch that far, so I settled for the silver Astore hanging up next to it.

My hazy memory box can’t remember all of the detail, but it was something like this: all silver, with full chromed forks and Concorde logos engraved on the crown, long, chromed rear stays, and Columbus Aelle plain gauge tubing.

The build was a mishmash of parts from my old bike and few new bits, which evolved bit by bit over the months. If I remember rightly, that would be Campagnolo Nuovo Record gears with Simplex shifters, an old Dura-Ace crankset (which I snapped), Cinelli 1A stem and 66 bars wrapped in Benotto tape, Tange headset, Modolo brakes, MKS or Suntour toe clipped pedals, Mavic GP4 rims on Nuovo Record small flange hubs, and a nice suede saddle.

Although it handled well, especially as a crit bike, I never fully took to the bike and its silver streak, and then later in the season fate stuck. In the last lap of a local road race, about four miles from the finish and on a very straightforward short descent, a plonker in front of me decided to show off and try a bunny hop. Yes, that’s right, he came down right in front of me. Over the bars I went, winded myself pretty badly, and then picked the bike up. The down tube had snapped just down from the head tube. I did get a local frame builder to fix it, and he also painted the front end black, which looked pretty awful. it never rode the same again.

Turning a broken dream into an Aquila shot (and a happy ending)

Somehow or other, I managed to either sell, or maybe part-ex, the Astore, and acquire that ruby red Aqila after all: half a size to small, Columbus SL, the dogs.

I raced that bike all over Europe, and despite going through many other bikes and brands over the years, and having it resprayed in another brand’s colours, it remained my turbo trainer bike until 2006. I finally sold it, to someone who probably has no idea what those C logos on the crown mean, and had never even heard of Concorde…