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Company founder Ugo De Rosa was born in 1934 in Milan, Italy. An amatuer racer before becoming a framebuilder his passion for racing led him to study mechanics and engineering and he opened his first shop in the 1953 and commenced manufacturing.
In 1973 De Rosa became the official frame builder for the Molteni team headed by Eddy Merckx and continued until his retirement in 1978. In those years the team won nearly all the major European races including the Tour de France and the Giro d’Italia. Still a family company, with the founders three sons employed across design, manufacturing and business management. It’s been a few years since they’ve been supplying a world tour race team but the company remains at the forefront of bike technology.
The Pininfarina design house has been where car makers have sought out beautiful wind cheating designs since the 1930s. Most famous for their association with Ferrari, Alfa Romeo and Maserati they also designed the Eurostar E320 train. Surprisingly they’ve done little in the cycle industry before but it’s no surprise that their collaboration with De Rosa has produced an exceptionally beautiful aero frame in the SK Pininfarina. While you can see that the wind tunnel has driven the overall design there’s a flair to the detailing that separates it from other similar bikes.
The SuperKing has it’s origins in the first carbon King frames De Rosa produced in 2000 though unusually the company still also constructs frames in house in in steel, aluminium and titanium. Their own ‘inner mould tooling system’ uses 3D printing and a special resin to further boost stiffness and keep the weight low.
It’s not just a great looking bike - as you’d expect from a company with De Rosa’s experience it rides beautifully, finding that balance between sprinting stiffness, cornering accuracy and seated comfort. De Rosa say it's "the perfect synthesis of style and performance”. Who are we to disagree?
Bike build projects are our favourite part of life at Cycle Exchange . From sublime spec Pinarello F10 builds to the raddest of Transition builds, we’ve done them all. Last week we had our favourite YouTuber Francis Cade instore to build up his latest bike, A Wilier 110 FX Carbon XC MTB.
So it’s that time of year again where we all start to look back and pick out our favourite moments, products, and memories. Despite 2020 not going to plan, shall we say, as far as new bike tech goes there have been some real highlights. Here’s our bikes of the year list for 2020!
