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In 1986, Litespeed‘s founders sought to provide an answer to cyclists asking for something strong and durable, yet light and agile. Up for the challenge, a team of designers began a new breed of bikes: Litespeed. “We discovered a new way to work with titanium and created a new and exciting cycling experience,” explains Litespeed’s Brad Devaney. The company grew into American Bicycle Group in 2000, at which time Quintana Roo was added.
Litespeed bikes are manufactured and assembled, while Quintana Roo bikes are painted and assembled, in American Bicycle Group’s factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Cane Creek employees Bryan Flack and Andrew Slowey visited Litespeed’s headquarters earlier this month. “It’s amazing, they’re like our sister company,” they explained. “You’re able to watch a bike get fabricated, welded, painted or finished, and assembled all in the same place. The facility has a very ‘homey feel’ – it was so neat to be there.”
Litespeed’s relationship with Cane Creek began in the early 1990s. “Back in the early ‘90’s we were buying Rock Shox,
brakes, brake posts, and a myriad of other items from then-Dia Compe USA, soon to become Cane Creek Cycling Components. The engineers of that day and time came to visit me at Litespeed, as we had a fork testing machine [that proved to be super] helpful in testing the first threadless headsets,” Brad recalls. Today, all Litespeed and Quintana Roo bicycles are spec’d with Cane Creek headsets. Quintana Roo is dedicated solely to the triathlete. Litespeed, however, offers a full range of high-performance road, endurance road, gravel, adventure, and both hardtail and full-suspension mountain bikes. Manufacturing titanium frames allows Litespeed to offer extremely lightweight bikes with high stiffness-to-weight ratios.
We’re currently obsessing over Litespeed’s Ultimate Gravel Ultegra Di2 completely decked out in Cane Creek components. Cane Creek’s eeWings titanium cranks, eeSilk premium suspension seatpost, and the 110 headset are right at home on this titanium beast. Litespeed boasts, “[The Ultimate Gravel] features race bike agility, pack stability, climbs and descends with ease, and yes, aerodynamics – [it’s] the Ultimate do-it-all gravel bike. We’ve even added vertical compliance using tubular, aero, titanium tubes as subtle springs.” We agree… and adding additional Cane Creek components takes the bike to the next level.
There are a lot of great component manufacturers out there… So we asked Litespeed – why Cane Creek?
Litespeed and Quintana Roo mirror our proclamation that the best components out there are the ones that work well without you noticing they’re there. They do the job so well – there are no quirks, no creaks, no subtle nuances you learn to forgive or work around. Litespeed and Quintana Roo deliver bikes that reflect a supreme attention to detail, are unequivocally reliable, and perform at the highest level. From their perspective, it makes sense to partner with a component manufacturer that offers the same. As a result, the rider is able to have an ideal experience on a holistic bike. Simply put: “Cane Creek keeps us, our athletes, and customers on course and focused on our tasks at hand.”
In the past Cane Creek and Litespeed had also partnered on almost all of Litespeed’s race team and demo/event tour efforts: “We partnered on multiple truck and trailer rigs rolling the country supporting athletes and customers.” Perhaps one day soon, we’ll reignite the event tour relationship…
