Bassi Rachel Step Thru

**Please note that shipping will be a separate charge** 

The world is littered with low trail, floppy steering, flexy tubed 1970’s French Mixtes. These are bad bikes, or at least 95% of them are, and they all use proprietary threading, weird diameter bars and stems, annoying fender mounts, and so forth. Plus, they ride like crud. Like an F-150 with a blown ball joint and 4 different sized tires, but somehow worse.

The thing about those old mixtes… they look great. I mean, stellar. Cool paint jobs, nice looking handlebars. Rideability be damned, they were style icons. Mixtes in general look great, and well made ones are stiff and responsive. Bassi, which is outta Montreal, where they mostly speak French, has taken the good parts of mixtes and ditched all of the bad parts. The Rachel, named after the street Bassi is located on, is a fun, zippy, stable bike, with no weird quirks to speak of.

It’s a bike that’s ideal for town use, but you could take it on chill dirt roads, or an overnighter no sweat. It’s not a mountain bike, or a class 4 roads bike, and you wouldn't want to set it up with drop bars. Set up up with Velo Orange Curvy Bars, or Nitto Albatross Bars, that sort of thing. Put a nice Nitto Technomic on it, or a Velo Orange quill stem. Absolutely put nice silver fenders on it, a front rack, and some lights. It’s a perfect car replacement bike, and it will look good doing all the things your car just looks silly doing. Going out to eat, going to the library. How many friggin books are you gunna get out?

The geometry of the Rachel is normal. It handles fine with or without a load. It descends in a stable manner. It corners well. It’s stiff enough to inspire confidence over pot holes. These are all things you want in a bike.

Max tire size, (for the 51cm frame) 26 x 1.75

Long reach, 55-73mm brakes. We like Tektros or Paul Racers.

1” threaded steerer tube

68mm BSA bottom bracket

27.2 seatpost

You can run it with gears or as a singlespeed with it’s semi horizontal drop outs.

All the braze ons for fenders and racks.

4130 butted steel, which is a damn fine thing to make a bike outta

A nice mustard-y yellow and Prussian blue, which was my favorite Liquitex color in 1999.