Italian handmade frameshop Officina Battaglin says they have big plans for 2020, with new bikes, new looks & updates to their long-running lugged steel Marosticana road frame. So to close out 2019, they will build just ten limited edition custom frames, featuring the unique Columbus SLX tubing that brought light weight & stiffness to bikes at the time when Battaglin was winning both the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España.
Battaglin Marosticana SLX limited edition Italian steel road bike
Lugged & brazed by hand in northern Italy from an exclusive Columbus SLX tubeset that hasn’t been made available to any other frame builder in more than twenty years. Custom geometry developed personally for you in a consolation with 1981 Giro-Vuelta winner Giovanni Battaglin. Finished in the high-polish cromovelato colors of your choice. And one of only ten framesets produced & individually numbered. Shipped anywhere in the world for free. That’s what you get if you buy one of the limited edition lugged steel Marosticana SLX framesets out of the Battaglin workshop.
Officina Battaglin has teased us of new steel road bikes to come in the new year, as well as new finishes & technical specs. But for now the classic frame in their collection, named for the home of their workshop in Marostica, Italy where all of their bikes are crafted by hand, gets a uniquely special limited edition. The standard Marosticana had been built with Columbus SL tubing, that which Battaglin raced for much of his professional career. But right about the time of his Giro-Vuelta double, Columbus introduced a newer, stiffer double-butted SLX tubeset that added helical ridges to the ends of the downtube and seattube to boost stiffness at the bottom bracket. Columbus claimed the five internal spiral ridges added just 41g to a frameset, but measurably improved performance for pro cyclists of the time. Now, that tubing has been out of production since the 1990s, but Battaglin convinced them to produce a few more sets for this limited edition classic.
Will the Marosticana SLX make you feel like you are riding a modern carbon bike? Of course not. This is a lugged Cyclex chromoly steel bike that is as much about a classic ride as it is those beautiful looks.
That’s of course why it gets a killer cromovelato finish…
You pick the color, and Battaglin will polish, chrome-plate, then color your custom frame & fork. All you need to do is figure out whether to build it up with a modern 12-speed Italian rim brake groupset or hunt down some new old stock components.
The custom fit, made-in-Italy Marosticana SLX frameset sells for 2500€ including frame, fork, custom color, and global shipping. Only ten SLXes will be made, each with an individually numbered plate brazed-on, so act fast. Fill out the interest form on their website, and the younger Battaglin will call you to get your custom bike project started.
