Raleigh Carlton Catalog — British Achievement

— Catalog spread —
BRITISH achievement

Sparkling foam arcs skyward as trim, thrusting bows slice through water. The power-boat in action,
a synthesis of British design flair, British engineering, the British gift for speed. Such
characteristics are also apparent in the Raleigh Carlton range — that superb collection of
classical lightweights designed for consistent, winning performance.

[A spread from a Raleigh Carlton catalog of the middle 1970s, photographed on a tidal creek at low
water with cabin cruisers propped on the mud behind. Two riders and a woman stand between two
machines: an orange and black Carlton Ten on the left with TEN on the down tube, and a chromed blue
Carlton on the right. Both carry taped drop bars, gum-wall tires and double chainsets. The clothes
date the sheet as precisely as anything printed on it: red flared trousers, patterned shirts with
long collars, a T-shirt with a cartoon print.

The headline is set in a heavy outline BRITISH against a Union flag shield with achievement in
italic beside it, and the copy underneath is doing something the rest of the range pages do not. It
sells nothing at all. There is no model named, no price, no specification. It spends its whole
paragraph on a power-boat and then asserts that the same national qualities are apparent in the
Raleigh Carlton range.

That is the Carlton position in one page. Carlton of Worksop was by this date Raleigh’s lightweight
and racing arm rather than an independent marque, so its catalog pages had to sound like a marque
anyway.

The spread prints no year. It is not from the Raleigh catalog of 1970, and the machines, the
typography and the clothes place it in the middle of the 1970s.]