Are you looking for a truly special new road bike? Something that’ll have your mates drooling over the details at the pre-ride coffee meet, then eating your dust once you hit the road? We might just have the answer for your needs.
Allied Cycle Works is a US-based brand that builds incredible-looking and extremely high-performing road machines from carbon fibre, to a specification that is as exacting as you are.
Founded in 2016 by Tony Karklins (founder of Orbea USA), the brand has an impressive list of names involved in the core team, including Sam Pickman and Chris Meertens who both spent time working at Specialized, Olivier Lavigueur (11 years composite work at Guru) and Jim Cunningham (40 years premium paint experience and founder of CyclArt).
That last hire is particularly exciting, as the striking aesthetics of Allied Cycle Works’ bikes are one of the brand’s biggest draws. From fearsome matt black, to pearlescent golds, to stunning crossfaded colour schemes, these are bikes that look fast standing still.
The Alfa
The first bike Allied ever made was the Alfa – an out-and-out speedster with stiffness to burn. The full monocoque carbon fibre frame tips the scales at a mere 875 grams, and its construction offers precision-placed compliance to mitigate any road chatter you might encounter. Extra resistance to failure is provided by strategically-placed Inegra fibres, soon to be a big thing in road bike production.
And, of course, the cable routing is all internal and designed to run with any of the most common groupset brands.
The Alfa is a bike that was made to race, pure and simple, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy ripping the club chaingang to pieces too.
We’re delighted to now be offering the Alfa to our customers, with three different component specs available on our website; Ultegra, Di2 and Dura-Ace. However, the possibilities don’t stop there.
Because of the fully-customisable nature of Allied’s business model, we can offer you one of their bikes with a whole suite of component packages, all assembled by our expert in-store mechanics. It truly can be the bike of your dreams.
Outside Magazine got one of the Alfas on test a few months back, and this is what they had to say about the impressive machine.
“I could immediately tell that the ALFA is quick, fast steering yet stable, and pleasingly stiff and responsive up front, with rear-end compliance that belies its racy nature. It stands up fine next to bikes like the Evo, Tarmac, and Trek Madone and probably outperforms them in some ways.â€
Red Kite Prayer, the US hipster bike rider’s blog of choice described the Alfa thus:
“But that bike. Damn. That bike. I really didn’t need to ride as far as I did to determine whether the Alfa is the real deal or just more smoke and mirrors. The Alfa is proof of something I’ve written previously, that if a manufacturer can manage to eliminate enough material to drop a frame’s weight into the sub-850 gram range, without sacrificing strength, which is a big if, the resulting bike will have a pretty terrific ride.â€
If you’re intrigued by the Alfa, drop by one of the stores to talk more. We have some framesets on display, but we can also get your new elite custom speed-machine delivered to you in 30 days from point of order. Not bad, eh?
