Bridgestone RB-1

The Bridgestone RB-1 was the top road bicycle in the range that Bridgestone Cycle sold under its own name in the United States, where the company's bicycle division was run in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Grant Petersen. Sheldon Brown's guide to Japanese bicycles calls it legendary and says it combined frame design taken from classic Italian road bikes of the 1970s with excellent Japanese workmanship and functional, reliable parts. It was extremely popular with racers and held its own against competing models that cost hundreds of dollars more. Bridgestone numbered its models backwards, so the low number marked the best of the line, with the RB-2 and RB-3 below it.