Cycling

Three of our brands will be featured in the 2006 Tour de France: Barloworld will ride Cannondale on the (two time Giro d’Italia winning) Six13 aluminum/carbon blend bikes , Saunier Duval-Prodir will ride the (2004 US Pro Championship winning) Scott CR1 carbon fiber bike, and Colnago has two teams on their C50 carbon fiber bikes: Domina Vacanze and Rabobank!

Cannondale, the pioneer of fat tube, thin wall, high performance frames now offers aluminum-carbon blend and full carbon road bikes from Pennsylvania.  Litespeed, the leader in shaped titanium frame bicycles and Merlin with the Tom Kellogg designed frames of titanium, ti-carbon blends, or full carbon comes from Tennessee.  Scott USA, based in Utah, offers a complete line of aluminum bicycles but their full carbon road and mountain bikes are second to none.  Independent Fabrication in Massachusetts offers custom steel or titanium road and mountain bike frames with the coolest paint jobs on the planet.  Nobillette, originally from the Ann Arbor area, continues to create fine tig welded or fillet brazed custom steel frames from Colorado.  Colnago road frames from Italy come in aluminum, aluminum-carbon blends, aluminum-ti blends, classic steel, and full carbon fiber.

Whether you want aluminum (still the performance/value leader), titanium with it’s relatively bombproof material and smooth ride, or carbon for the smoothest ride ever, we’ve got you covered!  Raw titanium is an expensive material and carbon fiber is labor intensive, and as such those frames have higher price tags than aluminum.  The custom steel frames are about the same price as aluminum, but without the weight penalty that steel had in the past.  Steel may still be the smoothest ride, especially on Michigan roads, but there is a slight sacrifice in climbs and sprints due to the more flexible nature of steel compared to the other materials currently available.