J B Brooks 1948 ‘Champion Lightweight’ range

At the Olympia Cycling Show of November 1948 J B Brooks launched a new range of lightweight saddles catalogued as ‘Lightweight Champions’

The range comprised 4 new ‘Champion’ saddles with aluminium cantle plates and stainless steel wires. They were claimed to be up to 40% lighter than their all steel frame B.17 equivalents.

Brooks even supplied seat post clamps manufactured from aluminium and stainless steel to match the saddles.

These saddles were very expensive and it was soon found that they were prone to problems with the cantle plates cracking around the area where the wires were inserted, see image above right.

There were also problems with the seat post clamp. The ‘ribbed’ area on the clamp, being aluminium, had a tendency to slip and strip the metal away, and thus enabling the saddle to move, with potentially very unpleasant results !

Presumably due to these problems, and perhaps poor sales, the range was dropped by 1952 and not listed in the Brooks catalogue of that year.

Consequently, relatively few were sold and these saddles are quite hard to find today, particularly the Sprint and Swallow versions.