Project Bike: Casati Dardo Italian Scandium Carbon Road Bicycle

The Dardo scandium alloy main frame and carbon fibre rear end road bicycle, serial #3281, from the house of Casati, Italian family bicycle fabricators, looks fast standing still in its diablo red and pearl white livery. Produced by brothers Luca and Massimo, it’s far from just a mere bicycle, these are works of art emerging from 100 years of family tradition.

As confirmed by Rudi from Cicli Casati, this frame is one of only 150 Dardo frames ever produced in this way, it is a true exquisite and rare find in the world.

The very first custom road bike I ventured forward gleefully with, and by custom I mean from scrawls on paper and more than just a new set of wheels and individually selected components, was fabricated by another pair of Italian brothers, Gianni and Fabio Bonetti, who have produced bikes not since 1920, but some fifty years younger, beginning their operation in 1970. Located around 50 kilometres from Venice and some 240 kilometres from brothers Luca and Massimo, funnily enough when the Bonetti bike was commissioned via email with the assistance of long-standing Italo-Australian Cycling Club Secretary, Gino, it was in fact a Dedacciai scandium frame and carbon fibre rear, just the same as this Ferrari-fast Casati Dardo. So even though I’m valiantly trying to track down my first Bonetti (please let me know here if you see it), in a way my lucid dreams of that first Italian escapade are being willingly stolen away by the Dardo.

Casati Bicycles are not ones to produce thousand upon thousand of bicycles every year, in fact even if you spent the next three hours googling “Casati Dardo”, it’d be impressive to find more than a couple of these original frames in existence, never mind finding a beautifully finished one in diablo red and pearl white one like this, by none other than famed bicycle painter, Carlo Dossena.

Cicli Casati, The History

Cicli Casati commenced in 1920, founded by Pietro Casati, before he raced as a professional cyclist in the years 1921 to 1923, and 1925. No doubt being a professional cyclist then bares little resemblance to the world tour teams that exist today, and professionally cycling would mean for him to also professionally be working in tandem too. Born in 1891, his team racing career commenced at almost 30 years of age, whilst his business was established alongside. His best performance, winning the Tour of Lombardy in 1921 would have aided his profile immensely, and led to an appearance in the 1923 Tour de France.

A third generation operation now, it remains one of the strong family-owned bicycle fabrication houses in Italy, maintaining the essence of the traditional craft and producing only limited numbers of steel, aluminium and carbon frames each year, and by small numbers, the meaning is around five per day, or a total of 1200-ish per year.

In this way, Pietro’s grandsons Luca and Massimo lay claim to ensuring the attention to detail is in their hands, that the workmanship is exquisite and without compromise, and that the (he)art of their frames carries the spirit intended, classic design and innovation that remains true to the very roots of family, quality first, quantity a very distant second (see the workshop tour video at the bottom of this post). 90% of their production is in fact custom for each frame order, tuning the geometry, sizing and design of paint finish for each order. Is this not the epitome of passion, every bike turned out of the workshop made by their own hands, in a time-honoured tradition? Even with the advancements of materials and popularity of carbon fibre, the workshop still produces around half of its production in metal frames.

Now, with this in mind then, imagine for a moment that you’re a third generation artisan bicycle builder, known for honing your craft over 100 years of Italian family tradition, you’re deeply focused on your latest custom frame builds, particularly following the devastation of a world health pandemic, and then some pesky Australian starts writing to you to ask a ridiculous amount of enquiries about one of their hallmark scandium frames from years ago. Hmm, yes, your hunch is probably right, they are much busier honing their latest beauties than wishing to attend to wildly enthusiastic emails from this passionate cyclist 16,000 kilometres away!