# Pair of 1955 Royal Crowns



## Oilit (May 5, 2017)

I picked these up a while back and I finally got some decent pictures. The story was that two brothers bought these new at the local Firestone tire store. They're certainly English, and they look more like a Hercules (Birmingham) than a Raleigh (Nottingham), but I don't know enough to be certain who built them. The hub on the blue one is dated "55   7" and the hub on the red one is "55   8", so they've been together a while. Any ideas on who made these?


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## usarnie1 (May 7, 2017)

Both of your bikes were made by Royal Crown in 1955.  Five years later that company was taken over by Raleigh Industries.


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## sam (May 8, 2017)

Built by one of the bicycle companies owned by the British Cycle Corporation before they bought Raleigh.


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## Oilit (May 8, 2017)

sam said:


> Built by one of the bicycle companies owned by the British Cycle Corporation before they bought Raleigh.View attachment 463562



Thanks for the picture! There's a little about the B.C.C. on Wikipedia (under Hercules), but not a whole lot.


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## sam (May 9, 2017)

The B.C.C. was owned by Tube Investments (which owned *REYNOLDS  and  A&P tubing) In turn the B.C.C. owned all the companies shown. When T.I bought Raleigh in the late50/early60s the Raleigh management took over managing all the companies which they merged into Raleigh.*


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## Oilit (May 9, 2017)

sam said:


> The B.C.C. was owned by Tube Investments (which owned *REYNOLDS  and  A&P tubing) In turn the B.C.C. owned all the companies shown. When T.I bought Raleigh in the late50/early60s the Raleigh management took over managing all the companies which they merged into Raleigh.*



"Royal Crown" isn't listed in the picture as one of the regular badges owned by B.C.C. Was that just for the North American market? Or maybe just for Firestone? I'm thinking about something like the Huffy Sportsman, made by Raleigh, but with a Huffy badge. Unfortunately, any decals on these two bikes perished before I got them.


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## sam (May 9, 2017)

These bicycle companies produced a lot of badges---including Indian and Ranger...as in Indian M/C and Mead Ranger. Just like with most American bicycle companies your independent store could place an order for "X" amount of bikes and have your own badge. Or like AMF put your decals over they're.


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## ironhill2whlr (Jun 4, 2017)

A little late to discussion, but I have a red Rollfast which looks virtually identical to red bike above. It has a cast metal (brass?) Rollfast head tube badge(pictured in my avatar) with Made in England at bottom and a D P Harris Lightweight decal at top of downtube. The only indication of vintage is 1962 stamped on Sturmey three speed hub shell on rear wheel.


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## Oilit (Jun 5, 2017)

ironhill2whlr said:


> A little late to discussion, but I have a red Rollfast which looks virtually identical to red bike above. It has a cast metal (brass?) Rollfast head tube badge(pictured in my avatar) with Made in England at bottom and a D P Harris Lightweight decal at top of downtube. The only indication of vintage is 1962 stamped on Sturmey three speed hub shell on rear wheel.



English bicycles became very popular in the U.S. after WWII, along with English cars and motorcycles. The lightweight 3 speeds are still sometimes referred to as "English racers" and compared to a single speed balloon tire bike, you can see why. Schwinn put Sturmey-Archer hubs in their own lightweight frames, but Huffy and AMF imported complete bikes (Raleigh and Hercules) and sold them under their own badges. It's no surprise that the big chain stores imported English bikes, but even for the manufacturers, designing lightweight three speeds from scratch would have taken time, and evidently English bikes were available at good prices after the war. Post some pictures of your bike and somebody on here can probably tell who made it.


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## bulldog1935 (Jun 5, 2017)

The bikes that were Club Racers to the Brits coined the term English Racer on this side of the pond, and the name carried for all drop bar bikes (incl French, Italian and Schwinn) into the early 70s, until Ten Speed took over.  In the new century, both terms mean something different.


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## SirMike1983 (Jun 5, 2017)

Oilit said:


> English bicycles became very popular in the U.S. after WWII, along with English cars and motorcycles. The lightweight 3 speeds are still sometimes referred to as "English racers" and compared to a single speed balloon tire bike, you can see why. Schwinn put Sturmey-Archer hubs in their own lightweight frames, but Huffy and AMF imported complete bikes (Raleigh and Hercules) and sold them under their own badges. It's no surprise that the big chain stores imported English bikes, but even for the manufacturers, designing lightweight three speeds from scratch would have taken time, and evidently English bikes were available at good prices after the war. Post some pictures of your bike and somebody on here can probably tell who made it.




"Export or die" was the motto for the British right after WWII. They relied heavily on exports to the US for revenue in those days. The English-made bicycles represented an extraordinary value in utility bicycles at that time, so several brands imported them under various labels.


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## Oilit (Jun 6, 2017)

@bulldog1935 , that makes sense. After the 10 speeds took over, the differences between various 3 speeds wouldn't have been a big issue for most people. When I was a kid, in the late '60's and early '70's, "racing bikes" were the thing to have, and included anything with drop bars, skinny tires and 10 speeds. At least among the schoolyard sophisticates.


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## Oilit (Jun 6, 2017)

SirMike1983 said:


> "Export or die" was the motto for the British right after WWII. They relied heavily on exports to the US for revenue in those days. The English-made bicycles represented an extraordinary value in utility bicycles at that time, so several brands imported them under various labels.



I'm guessing that part of the post-war economic boom in the U.S. was due to pent-up demand that had been suppressed during the Depression and through the war, and part was due to the fact that the rest of the industrialized world was still digging out of the rubble.


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## bulldog1935 (Jun 6, 2017)

I made a Memorial Day post, and I think the biggest part was the exposure English bikes got in England to the 8th Air Force and Expeditionary Forces before D-Day.
http://thecabe.com/forum/threads/memorial-day-our-love-for-lightweights.111436/
Right after the war, the English wanted to export anything they could, and we wanted to help their economy.
In the 60s, for the next generation, all things English were in.


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