NORRIS LOCKLEY on Jean Freulat/Frelat and my SMG:

"... SMG was the brand name of the frames made by Jean Frelat, a constructeur, based at Pavillons-sous-Bois, just to the east of Paris. He was very well known in the late 70s and early 80s, a time when he built quite a lot of frames for leading French amateur riders, on both road and track, who were from that general region of France. He also sponsored several French lady champions such as Isabelle Nicoloso and Valerie Simonet, both of them track riders. Valerie was the French sprint champion in 1981. Jean was quite an innovative builder, being well known for bronze-welded lugless frames and internal routing of all cables.... many of the builders in and around Paris started out as assistants to other builders, and ... Bernard Carre's workshops alone spawned several others such as ... possibly Frelat, ...

Jean Frelat who was the brains behind the firm SMG, ran two brands within the one - the SMG brand tended nearly always to be lugged frames whereas he reserved the other name SASEBO ... for his bronze-welded ones.

I have never seen an explanation of the abbreviation SMG but Sur Mesure Garanti seems very likely as the firm had a reputation for custom frames, particularly very small ones ie 46 and 47 cms with 700 wheels. Frelat was a very good marketing man, and for a few years in the late 70s and early 80s, his frames were seldom out of the columns of the French cycling press. He came up with quite a few ingenious designs particularly for track frames - a discipline in which he sponsored quite a few French champions.

I think that your frame is from Frelat's later years ie into the mid-to-late 80s; it is the design of the seat lug with its pockets to house the top ends of the seat stays that forms that judgement. This lug is probably an investment cast one from either Everest or Long Shen of Taiwan.

Frelat was very loyal to French suppliers using either Vitus or Camus tubes, rarely Reynolds, and sometimes Columbus as this firm had a greater choice. I think that the chances are that your frame is either Vitus or Columbus, with the crown being probably BOCAMA and the bracket Vitus or Dardannne.

... In terms of originality, I reckon that the frame was a custom-build for the guy whose name is painted on the top-tube. Paintwork might have been by a local firm called Vedett ..."

The [Bernard Carre] frame is even more interesting because the 'shoulders' of the head-tube lugs have been reprofiled to yield concave curves. This type of work later became to hallmark of Alain Michel, one of the last French KOF builders in his own right, whose workshop was only about a 30 minute ride up the road from Carre's. Jean Frelat, also an incredibly talented builder from the same neck of the woods, also used this style of lug profiling. I am engaged on some fairly extensive research into the Carre firm, and have reason to believe that both Michel and Frelat trained with Carre...and then moved on. Unfortunately Alain Michel was killed in an accident a couple of years ago, but Frelat is still surviving, just, building a very few steel frames from a small workshop in central Paris...the [Carre] fast-back treatment is not of the more solid treatment developed by Jean Frelat ... who might just have worked for the Carre firm. Francophiles would do well to look out for Frelat's work as well as Alain Michel's. Frelat's company was called SMG (Sur Mesures Garantis) - meaning 'guaranteed to be made-to-measure' ie custom. On occasions Frelat added the name SASEBO... mainly in reference to his lugless frames. I recognise that SASEBO is a Japanese word, and the name of a town in that country, but wonder whether it is connected too with track racing because many of the SMGs carrying that extra specification were track frames....I must find time to research the links between Carre and Frelat a little further, particularly as the fast-back stays on Peter's [Brueggeman] frame are very similar to those on the ... Carre.

Seller said "... S.M.G. French cyclosportive frame set from the end '70 or early '80.... "

The name Michel Stibler is in script on the top tube; Stibler has three Paris-Brest-Paris results (below), with the first one in 1983. 1983 corroborates the seller's dating; the Audax Club Parisien sticker on the head tube is the club which hosts PBP.

• 1983 finisher: 74:23 / 2252 - Michel Stibler, FR - VC Veterans et Ancetres
• 1991 non-finisher: 82:08 / 457 - Michel Stibler, FR - Club Sportif Loisirs Rosny/Bois
• 1995 finisher: 79:56 / 136 - Michel Stibler, FR - Club Sportif Loisirs Gend. Rosny/Bois

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