Cycles Follis
defunct French bicycle manufacturer
Cycles Follis, founded in 1903 and previously based in 10, rue Danton, Lyon, France, was a long-established artisan manufacturer in the French bicycle industry. Cycles Follis built a range of bicycles, but was particularly well known for its tandems and racings. During the 1940s and 1950s, he received many patents, mostly on brakes and drivetrain components. In the 1940s and 1950s Follis had teams and individual racers competing for him in his own name, most notably Jean Forestier, who won numerous races and three stages of the Tour de France in 1954–1957, finishing 4th overall in 1957 and winning the green jersey.
In 1973, the granddaughter of the founder Joseph Follis, Myriam, took over. She was married to the former employee Jean-Claude Chollet, and they ran the business until its closure in 2007. The entire production of this period were hand-crafted, made to measure steel frames and forks. Consequently, there was no serial production. Customers could determine if they preferred lugs or fillet brazed frames as well as practically any other detail. This included part specifications and paint, and only complete bicycles were sold.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cycles Follis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.