Emelle worth buying?

[Zippy]

This guy is selling two Emelle MTBs - one gents, one ladies - for £40 the two. To be honest I was considering buying them, reconditioning and selling on as the buying price is so low. I like tinkering with bits from skips and cannabalising bikes anyway.

I am thinking Emelle is too low a spec to be bothering with though and I would not see a good return.

I think i have talked myself out of the idea just ttyping this, but what the hey - what do you think?


... and I just realised you can't insert images unless they are already upploaded somewhere. i have a couple of pics to insert - can I do this without having them on the 'net?

Don't worry - I just found this: http://www.retrobike.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=67696

' think I just answered my own question (about the bikes)!

 

[wafflycat]

If it were me and my money, I wouldn't touch an Emelle with a bargepole.

 

[Moodyman]

If you intend to service the bikes for you & Mrs Zippy to use then £40 is a good price.

However, don't expect to make much profit from selling on as Emmelle is not an overly desirable brand. £40 and then your time and any parts you may need to replace is unlikely to return much.

 

[Cubist]

If it were me and my money, I wouldn't touch an Emelle with a bargepole.

In the 80s and 90s Emmelle made some quality bikes. I had an Emmelle Classic MTB whci was very well equipped (Reynolds CroMo frame, Shimano Biopace Chainset, Hyperglide cassette, and quality alloy wheels.) It was a £400 plus bike in the late eighties. It sat in my garage for twenty years and a couple of years ago I dug it out, cleaned it and changed the cables and brake blocks, and commuted on it for a year. It was very fast, but not the lightest on the market.
Check the mad paintwork!

In the late 90s I think Emmelle was sold and bought up by the far east. A friend of mine had a more recent Emmelle "mountain bike sort of thing" which was, frankly, horrible.

So, unless they are a matching pair of late eighties rigid cromo MTBs with Biopace chainsets (collectors would pay 40 quid just for the chainrings.....) then as Waffles says, leave them!

 

[Sheffield_Tiger]

I always wanted one of those Emmelle Classics.

Bike shop I worked in on Saturdays when at school (well, it was a bike dept in a toy shop called "At-Cost", but it wasn't that bad as such places go) used to stock Raleigh and Emmelle. Emmelle with all it's "333" and "555" HI-TEN (WOW! ) tubing names and garish paintwork

The Classic and another one, might have been called the Dolomite, same paint job just green/black rather than gold/black.

Never could afford one since the going rate for saturday staff in a cut-price toy retailer was £1/hr

The rest of the range all seemed to be named after big cats, panther, cheetah etc and were heavy low-quality tanks (but better IMO than Universal and more sturdy than the later BSOs like Magna)