Bici Aluminio: Aluminum Racing Bikes

We must, of course, acknowledge the forerunners of modern aluminum bicycles. Some of you might be surprised that an aluminum bicycle was made back in the 1930's. The article, from Cycling magazine 1938, at the Classic Rendezvous website talks about one of the aluminum bikes made at the time, the Carminargen.

Many of us are familar with some of the newer attempts at using aluminum including Vitus and Alan. These frames were used in the Tour de France for a few years and were OEM'd by other builders like Guerciotti, Motobecane and Colnago.

my thanks to Jos @ V*V*Velo

Gary Klein brought us one of the first large tubed frames:

photo courtesy of monclerk2

and Cannondale brought the large tube frame to mass production.

This brings us up to the hydroformed frames that started appearing in the Tour de France in about 1995.