About Ebykr
Ebykr celebrates classic and vintage lightweight bicycles through provocative imagery and opinion. Ride along with us.
About Ebykr
Ebykr celebrates classic and vintage lightweight bicycles through provocative imagery and opinion. Ride along with us.
Bicycle Makers · France
Everything Ebykr holds on Routens: six articles, a Timeline of 13 dated events from 1913 to 2014 and one document in the archive.
The history of Routens on Ebykr.

Jo Routens of Grenoble: his BRA rides, his 1939 Grand Prix Duralumin win, the Hugonnier years and constructeur bicycles built for everyday riders.
Grouped by format, the most read first.

A timeline of Jo Routens of Grenoble, 1913 to 2014: the BRA, the 1939 Grand Prix Duralumin, the Hugonnier years and three Paris-Brest-Paris tandem wins.

The build sheet of a 1967 Jo Routens randonneur in Reynolds 531, restored by Mariposa in 2017: a Routens front changer, Maxi-Car hubs and Lefol fenders.

The build sheet of a 1950s Jo Routens 650B randonneur restored by Cycles Grand Bois: fillet brazing, inward cantilevers, Cyclo gears and Maxi-Car hubs.

Five sepia photographs of Hugonnier-Routens bicycles of 1946 to 1948, set beside the catalog drawings made from them: a mixte, a tandem and randonneurs.

Jo Routens in pictures: Grenoble advertisements and covers, the 1946 Hugonnier-Routens catalog photographs and drawings and detail shots of surviving randonneurs.
Where Routens is named outside its own pages: seven articles and three archive documents from two other makers and one publication.
The articles that name Routens most often first.
The French Constructeurs: Singer, Herse, Routens and Their Rivals — Ask a collector of classic French bicycles what a constructeur is and the answer usually begins…
…1 May 1958 · Brand Storytelling · Le Cycle carried a Daniel Rebour drawing of the J. Routens randonneuse placed first under Gaillard, built by the Grenoble constructeur on brazed Reynolds tubing with a…
…the best time in his category at the Grimpée for over 50 years and may still today. (Jo Routens also comes to mind in this context, who both built and rode in a big way himself.) This Le Cycle page by Rebour…
…has a few obvious (and not-so-obvious) examples of these things: Rene Herse vs. Jo Routens vs. Alex Singer craftsmanship, Maxi-Car's (and Harden's) distinctive hubs, Coventry and Saint-Étienne, Daniel…
…of the bicycle and drawings of the details made by Bourdel, Daudon, Herse, Hugonnier-Routens and Singer. Quite the compendium, one would have to say. He came back to the frame again and again. Page 12 of Le…
…its rider above the mundane and ties him into the world and its fellows. René Herse, Jo Routens and Alex Singer came to distinguish themselves as among the greatest masters of this craft -- that of making finished…
…Alex Singer a few streets away in Levallois, André Maury in the 15th Arrondissement, Jo Routens in Grenoble. Herse appears in nearly every one of those stories, usually as the name the others are measured against.
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