Des bicyclettes à 135.000 francs ? — L’Officiel du cycle, 6 October 1951, Bicycle Prices Since 1896

From L’Officiel du cycle, du motocycle et du camping, 6 October 1951, the paper’s special number for the 1951 Paris Salon du Cycle et du Motocycle and its 60th anniversary, page 19: an article on the price of a bicycle from 1896 to 1951, with a facsimile 1896 advertisement page. The title, headings, captions and lists are transcribed as printed; the text is summarized in Ebykr’s words, and the page images carry it in full.

— Page 1 —
Des bicyclettes à 135.000 francs ?

C’est pourtant ce que l’on verrait si …

[Ebykr summary; the article’s text is not reproduced. The unsigned article opens on the rise in bicycle prices, which it says has struck the public more than most: from about 500 francs in the years before the war, an ordinary machine has passed some 18.000 francs, a coefficient of 36. Without going into the causes (labor and metals among them), the paper reports what a search of its own collections, which cover sixty years of the cycle and the automobile, has turned up. Its conclusion: a bicycle of 1896, converted into the francs of the Fourth Republic, would cost 135.000 francs. In its number of 8 March 1896 the paper carried the Cleveland, advertised as an American luxury bicycle at 625 « francs-germinal », more than 31 louis, which at the rate of the louis comes to about 135.000 francs; the Cleveland had a variable-gear hub but far less equipment than a modern machine (no lighting, for one), whose price is eight times lower. The same number offered the cheaper Humber at 375 francs, about 80.000 francs of 1951. From that time progress in construction brought prices down: in 1898 machines at 120 francs (6 louis, 25.000 francs of the Fourth Republic), still dear because they were sold bare; in 1901 the price fell below 100 francs, as an advertisement of the house Chaigneau found in the December issue of that year shows, which would put the machine at 20.000 francs today. The real gap is wider still, the article argues, because builders now deliver their machines with mudguards, variable gear, two brakes, bell, electric lighting and reflector, far from the bare machine of 1900 described in another article of the special number. It closes by noting, on the reproduced page of 1896, old advertisers who still advertise in the paper: Cycles Hurtu, the Lamplugh saddle (today the Compagnie Continentale de Sellerie), the Dunlop and Michelin tires, firms whose half-century of activity shows the quality and endurance of French industry.]

[Facsimile of an advertisement page of 1896, reproduced by the paper and transcribed in full:]

CLEVELAND
LA PREMIÈRE MARQUE AMÉRICAINE
C. BERTRAND, Directeur
6, place de la Madeleine, PARIS

CLEVELAND
Bicyclette de Luxe. — PRIX : 625 Fr.
COMPLÈTE POUR HOMME OU DAME
Poids 10 kgs.
Moyeu à changement de vitesse
Catalogue franco
Guidon en bois antivibrateur

PNEU
G. et J.
Le plus vite AU Monde

Cycles
HURTU
E. DILIGEON & Cie
Ingénieurs-Constructeurs
PAR
54, R. SAINT MAUR

SI VOUS NE DÉSIREZ PAS UN MODÈLE DE LUXE, ACHETEZ DE PRÉFÉRENCE LE
No 1 de
A 375 FR. HUMBER
Roues 70X70, manivelles détachables, selle Brooks, chaîne plate, pneumatiques Humber, pédales à scie ou caoutchouc. — Poids : 14 kil.
C’EST LE PLUS GRAND SUCCÈS DE L’ANNÉE

LES MACHINES
PEUGEOT
S’IMPOSENT PAR
L’EXCELLENCE DE LEURS ROULEMENTS
Les Fils de PEUGEOT Frères, 22, aveuue de la Grande-Armée. — Paris

PNEUMATIQUES
MICHELIN
pour Voitures et Vélocipèdes

[The page is set as a headline across the top, the article’s opening in three columns below it, then the 1896 facsimile filling the left two columns and the article continuing down the right column. The facsimile is a stack of boxed advertisements, each in its own rule frame: the two Cleveland notices side by side in one long frame; the G. et J. tire box with heavy black side bars beside the Hurtu box, whose name is set on a curve between two small printer’s ornaments; the large Humber box with a heavy drop-shadow frame and a line engraving of a diamond-frame safety bicycle with mudguards, a sprung saddle and a forward handlebar; the Peugeot box with its name between two of the same ornaments; and the Michelin box with a bound-book edge drawn at both ends. In the right column a small line drawing shows a bicycle wheel lying in a box frame with a tire lever beside it. No signature is visible on either drawing. The ghost of the following page’s statistical table shows through the paper of this copy.]