Friday, February 13, 2009

Rough and Ready 1980 Royale

"Dear Fuji Otaku,

I was browsing your blog and noticed that the Royal did not appear to be represented on your site. I recently bought one and did some rudimentary work to get it roadworthy again. I submit these pictures to you of the bike in its natural state: Covered in grime from a pleasant(read: huge squall with 40 mph wind gusts) day's commute. As you can see, this is not a prime example as the frame could use new paint, the decals are faded or gone, and the front derailleur was taken off an old Roadmaster(nothing like quality parts, eh?)

Anyway, I have enjoyed reading through your archive and look forward to reading you future post.

Sincerely,
Thomas Harding"

Thomas,

Thanks for filling in this gap in our coverage. The Royale always constituted the top model of Fuji's midrange lineup and is quite a nice bike. One of my long term goals is to acquire a Royale, what I'm hoping for is one of the large mixte models.

Speaking of large, maybe it is just anecdotal evidence, but over the many hours scouring craigslist, ebay, etc, for Fujis for sale, I seem to have seen a LOT of really large Fuji Royales, like 63 cm. If anyone knows the reason for this, please let us all know.

And just like shiny and silver beats matte and black in components, dirty and ridden beats clean and garage bound in bicycles. And keep the pictures coming!

Your humble servant,

Fuji Otaku













1 comment:

T. E. B. H. said...

After consulting the catalogs again, i discovered that my Royale is actually an '81 model, as opposed to an '80 model