05/27/2026
**For serious enthusiasts only:
Frame height: 52cm
700 wheels | 28 inch
Price: $1,850.00.
Please call for The Wrench for an appointment- 1-204-296-3389.
Here’s your chance to own a piece of history. One of the rarest of rare vintage bicycles that is so unique, it’s the only bicycle patented by the manufacturer, CCM.
A 1938 CCM Flyte. It’s been professionally restored with some modern improvements that make this bike a masterpiece that any cycling enthusiast would be proud to own.
It’s Canadian designer, Harvey Peace, was a champion cycle racer in his youth and his son Douglas, was on the Canadian Track Cycling Team at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. The CCM Flyte is a very unusual bicycle. Produced for just 5 years, from 1936-1940, before war clouds shut down most bicycle production in Canada, the Flyteremains a much sought-after collector bicycle to this day.
The fact that this bike survived through WWII when most underutilized bikes were recycled for their metal and made into bombs and bullets for the war effort, is in itself, incredible.
There were two key objectives in the design: a sleek, streamlined style. After all, this was the middle of the Streamlined Decade of the Art Deco Period (think 38’ Bugatti) and, a comfortable sprung ride without a mechanical suspension. Roads were still pot-holed back then, and in addition, one had to navigate uneven Trolly Car tracks in the Dirty Thirties.
CCM came up with an innovative solution for this period; a combination of an unusual, reversed fork geometry and a rear loop frame, all made from seamless aviation-grade thin steel tubing. Both the front fork and the frame provided a feather-bed ride over harsh surfaces, without the drag of balloon tires or the movement of springs
At the time, the CCM Flyte was considered the height of Canadian style. In the first year it was in mass production; Canadian National Railways, famous then for such innovations as the first wireless service on Transcontinental passenger trains (1923), saw the appeal of the Flyte design and adopted it. They bought a fleet of these bikes across Canada for their Telegram Messengers.
The wide cruiser style handlebars for the domestic market were replaced with heavy-duty braced handlebars for the CNR Telegram Messenger version. They were borrowed from CCM’s Motorbike models which leads us to believe that there is a good chance that this is one of the Telegram Messenger machines.
This 1938 model is the first year with a chrome fork, and the gold and black paint scheme was featured on the CCM catalog of that period.
The Flyte was a streamliner in a leaner more engineered tradition. It included an advanced cotterless crank (developed inhouse by CCM and used on other top models) the Triplex Hanger. This had a triangular projection on the bottom bracket axle to grip the crank.
The pedals, also designed and patented by Harvey Peace in July 1923, were of an innovative aluminum monocoque design and named after the General Manager of CCM Weston Plant as ‘Gibson’ pedals.
The most prominent difference (from all bicycles before or since) was the reversed and sharply contoured front fork. The rake angle was actually conventional, despite the startling appearance. In a radical design move, the fork came horizontally out of the headset (instead of the normal vertical) and acted as a C-shaped trailing link spring. Chrome-moly hi-tensile aircraft steel tubing was used, again ahead of current practice in the industry at the time.
Then there was the frame itself, with an elegant rear loop design that included a built-in rear axle adjuster. The rear stays followed the curve started by the crossbar, then curved around to the rear axle forming an elliptical rear spring suspension.
Braking on the Flyte was by CCM’s sturdy Hercules design of coaster brake on the rear wheel, patented in 1937. A set of original Dunlop rims come with the bike.
