About Ebykr
Ebykr celebrates classic and vintage lightweight bicycles through provoking imagery and opinion. Let's roll together!
This feature article provides an unprecedented visual window into the industrial soul of the Idéale brand, presenting rare archival photographs of the F. Tron & Cie and Tron & Berthet facilities and the generations of artisans who defined them. These…
The history of Idéale is a century-long narrative of industrial perseverance and technical mastery that transformed a modest Parisian stamping workshop into the emblematic brand of the French saddle. Founded in 1890 by Jean-François Tron, the company’s trajectory was defined…
Idéale saddles remain among the least understood classic bicycle components given their standout prominence and frequent exorbitant value. The dizzying array of models produced under the Idéale marque (82 and counting) continues vexing even the most ardent collectors, who seem…
Model No. Category Top Material Rail Material Size Weight Technical Details & Notes 1 / 1 Bis Road Leather (1st Choice) Steel 9.8″ x 7.1″ Produced under Elaedy and Nortex brands; features 4 vertical springs. 2 Comfort Leather (Genuine) Steel…
Key Events from the Company To capture the essence of Mavic is to look beyond individual patents and witness a century-plus cadence of innovation that has pulsed through the heart of Lyon since 1889. While our broader retrospective explores the…
The Golden Age of the Yellow Diamond: A Mavic Retrospective To the enthusiast of classic lightweight and vintage bicycles, few component makers evoke as much prestige and technological reverence as Mavic. Familiarity, too. Established in Lyon, France, in 1889, the…
MAFAC’s story is that of a specialist brake innovator facing the rise of integrated groupsets. For 20 prosperous years, MAFAC filled a crucial gap by creating brakes—like the pioneering Criterium cantilever and revolutionary Racer center-pull models—that were revolutionary in their…
Introducing MAFAC In the historical archive of classic lightweight and vintage bicycles, some components get relegated to lowly footnote status, while others stand tall as towering monuments to engineering achievement. Among the latter, the name MAFAC—an acronym derived from the…
The job of a bicycle designer parallels that of a surgeon in many senses: triage what’s wrong, decide what no longer functions, find a way to solve the problem and repair or replace whatever needs fixing. And like any good…
As with other French component makers from cycling’s golden era that remain popular today – Ideale, JOS, Maxi-Car and Stronglight, to name a few – surprisingly little is known about the Lefol marque given the timeless familiarity of the company’s…
