Product Description
This beauty may be the penultimate leather saddle of the classic era! Its the direct continuance of the idea behind the legendary French Constructeur era Ideale saddles flat duralumin alloy rails—take a popular performance saddle and put drastically lighter frames and rails on it. This one swaps the wild flat alloy rails for titanium in standard round format to fit your favorite standard seatpost. This came out in the 70's, when the industry was beginning to play in titanium with the Teledyne Titan leading the popular way. Ideale claims the ti undercarriage gives a 43% weight savings.
It has the Daniel Rebour treatment which was a patented leather conditioning/softening process that was applied to a small amount of saddles, and is accompanied by the REBOUR stamp on the top. Daniel Rebour's claim to fame is as an illustrator of bicycle components. He wrote/drew a book called "Rebour: The Illustrations of Daniel Rebour". But he was also an accomplished cyclist, and this saddle process is his biggest physical contribution to the industry.
The Ideale 90 is comparable to the Brooks Professional, both being their company's most popular model for sporting cyclists. Its long and sleek and geared towards touring and racing.
Condition
Near mint lightly used and show bike worthy condition! The leather is supple without cracking/crackling when you flex it. No cracking, even at the rivets. It's been broken in evenly and lightly with no sitbone indents. It's clear this saddle has been taken care of properly and stored indoors. Leather top has some light patina and general wear but it looks wonderful. Very minimal wear to the ti rails/frame. Absolutely show bike worthy for anything but NOS bikes.
Details
- Titanium frame, rails, plus nose side rivets
- Large copper rivets
- Markings: "Rodée Main Salon... Rebour", "Special Competition Ideale TB 90", "Ideale S.D.G.D"
- 1970's to VERY early 80's
- Black leather
- Made in France