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Litespeed

Of the small group of accomplished Titanium-focused companies, none has more experience in producing frames than Litespeed. Experience, of course, is an asset in itself. Titanium is incredibly difficult to machine, shape and weld, and no company has had more opportunity to master the nuances of the material. Litespeed's success as a company has had the added benefit of allowing them to build the most sophisticated Ti manufacturing facility in the world. Not only is every Litespeed Ti frame handbuilt in their Tennessee factory, but that's also where they CNC machine the discrete parts required to make a frame - the dropouts, the bottom bracket shells, the cable guides, etc. Litespeed forms, shapes, and bends every tube in-house. They design and manufacture all of their tooling, dies, and fixtures. They even design and build almost all of the equipment necessary to make the tubesets themselves. Litespeed keeps outsourcing at an absolute minimum in order to ensure a peerless level of quality control.

As many people know, Litespeed frames rebadged as Peugeot, Giant, Merckx (to name a few) have been prominent for well over a decade under some of the biggest luminaries of pro cycling. It's no secret that a certain 7-time American winner of the Tour de France enjoyed his first blockbuster professional success - a World Championship Road title in Oslo in 1993 - on a Litespeed. Richard Virenque's first 4 King of the Mountains titles in the Tour de France were won on a Litespeed. And a pile of World Cup top-10's, Grand Tour stage victories, and at least one additional World’s Road title have been won on Litespeeds. Few bikes can rival Litespeed in the breadth of terrain, conditions, and circumstances in which they found success in the European professional peloton over the last decade.