Chesini Innovation (1992)

The pinnacle of steel and the last lap for midsize framebuilders

By the time this beautiful Italian bike was making the rounds, most racers had switched to carbon or aluminium. ‘I love this bike, but it’s also a bit sad,’ says Anderson.

‘By this point, Chesini had been around for almost 70 years. These midsize Italian companies were made up of engineers and artisans. Out of all of them it was only really Ernesto Colnago who understood the writing was on the wall for steel and had the financial muscle to invest in carbon.’

Of Europe’s many other famous makers, most would soon be gone or drastically diminished in size.

‘What you often see in traditional industries using established technology is that they do try to innovate with their products to keep up,’ says Anderson. Striving to match the pace of American and Asian brands, this beautiful La William Duvel Team bike features a radical compact geometry that prefigures that introduced by Giant a few years later. Clever, but not enough to stop the tide.