Crescent
CRESCENT MCB
Updated 4.11.2013
Originally a USA brand bicycle, Crescent became a Swedish product:
American company Western Wheel Works in Chicago (50,000 bicycles made in 1894) manufactured a more affordable bicycle line named “Crescent”. There was a bicycle in progress and these bikes were exported to Sweden via a stockholder company Aktiebolaget Amerikansk Cycle Import, Eli Pettersson & August Lindblad.
In 1896 August and Eli imported 6,000 Crescent bicycles. Circa 1907-1908 AB Amerikansk Cycleimport started to produce bicycles with the name Crescent in their own factory in Sweden. It is unclear how they obtained the well known brand…
“From early 1960s, Crescent and Monark was actually the same bikes but with different colour, decals, badges, etc. They were the dominant brands in Swedish racing and also sold a lot in Norway and … Finland.”
“The famous Pettersson brothers, with three consecutive TTT worlds titles 1967-1969 rode these bikes, two of them (Erik and Sture) on the orange Crescents while Gösta and Thomas rode the light blue Monark. Gösta won the 1971 Giro d’Italia on a Monark although that was a custom made bike, (said to be) De Rosa, painted blue. (Dirty joke of the late 70’s: “Do you know what the queen and Gösta Pettersson has in common? – The both have a Monark ‘tween their legs”)”
“In the late seventies the company marketed Crescent as the top end quality bike while Monark became a budget brand and was out of racing. This is still the case..(but) last year there once again was a Monark road racer on the market, at budget price. ….. I ride a 1968 Monark with Campy bar end gear changers and other goodies.”
“Today Crescent & Monark are two brands in a Swedish owned bike conglomerate including also Bianchi, Gitane and the Peugeot cycling division as well as Norwegian DBS and the group is the biggest on the European market.”
