Last Friday, Gilles Lapierre (seen here on the left with Seattle Bike Supply’s Tim Rutledge) was in town to present the 2008 Lapierre bicycle line. Mr. Lapierre, whose grandfather founded the company in 1946, is hoping to steadily expand into the US market with a selection of performance road and mountain bikes.
Lapierre’s carbon fibre X.Lite and S.Lite road bikes are premium road frames utilizing the tube-to-tube process of joining the carbon tubes. The X.Lite frameset using high-modulus carbon (HM) is the Française des Jeux professional team bike for Pro Tour circuit, and weighs around 900gr. The S.Lite frame is built with longer chainstays, taller headtube, and different carbon tubes to give a more vertically compliant ride to rock the pave sectors of Paris-Roubaix or whatever tortured and chip-sealed road you’ll ride on your next brevet.
However, the real innovation comes in the form of the Lapierre Passport. This is a short-travel full-suspension mtb that happens to fold up without any tools and fit into an extremely clever soft-case for air travel. Two years in development, this travel bike system shows shows a clean and refined design.
Hopefully, Bikehugger will get our hands on a bike for testing.
Lapierre bikes are distributed in the US by Seattle Bike Supply.
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