CLX
SAVE 30% ON ALL IN-STOCK COLNAGOS!
One reason we're so enamoured with marques like Colnago and Cyfac is that they continue to use old-world craftsmanship alongside cutting edge, space-age technology. The other reason is that they value their tradition and are confidently opposed to many of the prevalent processes which have turned neo-brands into the overnight rockstars of the cycling world. Colnago, like Cyfac, has hand assembled each one of their framesets on a production line which sees the bike you'll ride alongside the bike Pettachi, Zabel, or Freire will ride. Like Cyfac, Colnago has no separate "race division," or separate production line which favors the bikes the pros will ride over the bikes the enthusiast will ride.
Even in the face of exploding labor costs, materials costs, and a Euro that seems like it's on an unending upward trajectory, Colnago and Cyfac have stuck to their guns making small batches of supremely beautiful, hand-crafted carbon bikes. In so doing, they have eschewed a process all-too-common among bicycle brands: monocoque construction. Colnagos and Cyfacs bikes have all been lugged, or bonded and wrapped using miter-joints, instead of being delivered from a one piece mold. Their processes are vastly more expensive in terms of labor, materials, and cash flow: getting product to market the old fashioned way costs money and risks sales to the brands who can dramatically cut costs on frames churned from molds like water from a faucet.
But Colnago--perhaps more so than Cyfac--has been a little more market savvy and nimble. That's not surprising as Colnago produces about 20 times more frames that Cyfac. In so doing, Colnago wisely saw that there was a way to engineer monocoque frames that meet their strict ISO 9001 requirements. In so doing, Colnago was able to manufacture frames to their unparalleled quality standards, using the industry's highest grade of carbon fibers, and yet proudly badge each frame with the Colnago stamp of approval. The CLX is the fruit of this endeavor.
It's no secret that for several years Colnago had outsourced the production of their aluminum frames to Giant. Why Giant? At the time, Giant and Colnago were the only ISO 9001 certified bicycle frame manufacturers on the planet, so it made sense that if Colnago were going to contract someone to build their frames, the contractor's quality standards had better be as high as those of Colnago. With the introduction of the Colnago CLX, Colnago has for the first time sourced production of one of their full-blown race framesets to an outside maker, again, Giant. The carbon used in the CLX is still Italian-made ATR carbon, the highest quality carbon in the industry, and the attention to detail is still all Colnago (even if this version takes an English BB!).