Motobecane is one of the major French players  on the bicycle market in the 80s. With their acquisition in 1986 they got out of business , so there is no Motobecane catalogue of 1986. The pink bike I bought for 360 SEK  (that’s 40 EUR or 54 USD at the time I’m writing this – June 2014) is therefore probably one of the last bikes produced under the name Motobecane.

Finding the Motobecane
I found the bike on tradera.com, the Swedish eBay. The bid was somehow low so I decided to bid 300 sek and then increased it to 360. The seller is an older person who mentioned that the bike belongs to his wife and it was unused for more than 10 years (the bike, for what it matters). From the picture on tradera I also noticed the bike was in the bike room of the building and the status of the components confirmed that.

The status and the components

Since the bike was bought on eBay you have to accept the deal, cannot discuss too much about the bike. But luckily it was in a good shape.

The pink paint is chipped off the frame in one spot on the frame and few more spots on the fork.

the handlebar tape is…OK but not staying nicely on the handlebar.

The saddle also looks like it had some better days, but is absolutely usable.

The gears look in very good shape.

Weinmann 500 breaks

Identification

Well, by the hubs I’d say the Motobecane training was produced in 1986 or 1987. Most, if not all of the components are the original ones.

Similar bikes:
This one on ebay has the same frame, but is branded as MBK, after the aquisition. And it doesn’t feature dropbars.

This page in Spanish has a nice description of the Motobecane transformation in MBK and of the bike itself.

This MBK Trainer also has the other kind of handle-bar