Festka offers a wide range of bikes custom built from steel, carbon, and titanium for clients around the world, but their ever-expanding line-up felt like it was getting a bit to broad and lacking focus. So that’s what they have done, focus back on the premium road segment that defines their core. At Eurobike they re-presented their brand with the new four model line named for the materials used, each of which can be tailored for the track, smooth or gravel roads, and even a bit of cyclocross. Like all of the bikes, the new carbon+titanium Doppler can even be built with disc brakes or clearance for fat tires. Jump past the break for more…
As a custom frame shop, each of the bikes Festka had on hand at Eurobike were created for individual cyclists, and were shown with a brief bit of the rider’s back story. While two were the personal bikes of the company’s founders, the rest were either recently completed and would go to customers directly after the show, or had already been ridden and even raced, and were back on loan for the show.
There aren’t that many companies worldwide that work at the top level with both carbon and titanium. But with their own in-house ti and carbon departments Festka decided to create a bike to take the best of both. The new Doppler becomes one of their most premium bike with a frameset selling for 5300€, and promises to offer race bike performance and endurance bike comfort.
The 1150g Doppler brought Festka’s two separate carbon and ti R&D teams together to see how they could bring the benefits of both materials to a single bike. Carbon joinery and their own robot-woven Rocket Tubes get the task of maximizing stiffness, and the shaped and machined titanium elements give comfort and a forgiving ride quality.
The integrated seattube, seat cluster, and seatmast shave 500g off a comparable ti frame, while at the same time offering dampening by virtue of the long small diameter tubing. The carbon headtube boosts steering stiffness and again reduces weight overall. The shaped ti top and down tubes can then lend the unmatched comfort of titanium. Then straight carbon chainstays guarantee efficient power transfer, while the thin ti seat stays offer enough give to lend a comfortable ride, and the ti monostay keeps braking stiff and responsive.
Festka really sweats the details, and its finishes completely set it apart. This Dazzle painted One LT is a perfect example and Festka’s third iteration of the warship-inspired finish. The bike belongs to founder and Product manager Michael Moureček who uses it as his daily driver in and around the cobbled streets of Prague. While Festka doesn’t chase the latest industry trends they really are a company almost obsessed with continuous innovation. Moureček takes inspiration in his work from his customers “Every morning when I wake up, I look at Instagram to see the happy faces of people on our bikes in all corners of the world. This is the best motivation” to keep moving forward with new designs and projects.
Festka’s bikes are truly unique with each one hand built, painted, and spec’ed piece-by-piece to satisfy the individual buyer’s needs and tastes. And with a graphics team on hand and tens of thousands of colors at their disposal, there really is no limit to what can be done.
The mainstay bike in Festka’s line-up is their carbon One, which we introduced last fall. It has grown out of the company’s early crowd-supported start with their first carbon Zero, which we reviewed last summer. But the One has now developed into their most flexible bike with several standard variants of the tube-to-tube frame. Variants go from the standard road riding One to the race tuned One RS, and the extra light One LT.
The standard ~900g One forms the starting base for the series with a 44mm headtube, PF86 BB, and carbon dropouts, and includes a 3T Rigida Pro fork for 3500€. The next level up race-ready One RS gets reinforced joints and a complete tubing set tuned to the same resonant frequency for a faster more durable ride. It gets the same 44mm headtube and PF686 BB, but adds in titanium dropouts for durability on the race scene, and gets frame weights around 930g. Framesets include the 3T Rigida Team fork for 4400€. The lightweight One LT (like the Dazzle bike above) gets an even lighter custom tubeset, carbon dropouts, and an integrated seat mast and seatpost head/topper that tops out at around 780g with a simple paint job. (This one adds about 40g more in elaborate paint and a stiffer rear triangle and downtube. Its total weight is said to be 5.71kg complete.) The LT sells for 6200€ with a THM Scapula CT fork.
The One Motol is the track-specific version and is built extremely stiff as a race-only bike. It gets a 120mm rear end, with titanium horizontal fork ends, and is available with either a PF86 or traditional BSA threaded BB. It weighs around 1kg, and comes with a Columbus Pista fork for 3500€. This bike belongs to previous Czech and European track Champion and World silver medalist Vojtěch Hačecký, who has been racing it since the start of the year.
The One Gravel uses reinforced tubing and joints with clearance for up to 35mm tires. It’s built on a 135mm rear end, is disc-only, and comes with a Columbus Mud fork for 4600€. The One Gravel was developed with Tune to showcase their new prototype disc-brake versions of their 28mm wide x 38/60mm deep Schwarzbrenner carbon tubular wheels.
A lot of Festka’s work goes into the detailing of their bikes, like the Classic version of their carbon One and the track-racing One Motol. But Festka’s builders also do a lot of work with titanium for their ~1700g Asphalt and stainless steel for their ~1850g XCr Modern and ~1700g XCr Classic.
The ti Asphalt is an obsessively engineered bike with a number of specially designed and CNC-ed elements and extensive tube shaping throughout to bring stiffness and premium performance to a material that most titanium bikes don’t truly capitalize on. Festka’s in-house Master of Titanium, as they call him, has been engineering ti bikes for over 2 decades (coming from the defunct Morati), having built bikes ridden to world championship in more than one discipline. The Asphalt is the most modern iteration of Czech Ti, and can be built into anything from a road racer to a gravel tourer from 3800€.
The XCr Modern is a premier steel race bike with oversized and shaped tubing to maximize stiffness. The XCr Classic on the other hand gets smaller traditional looking round tubing and an 1.125″ fork for extra classic steel comfort. Both bikes sell for 3100€ and can be built into limitless permutations.
All Festka frames are hand-crafted in the Czech Republic custom for each customer, with raw Japanese carbon fiber for bikes entering the country to be woven into Festka-specific Rocket Tubes, and all of the ti tubes and pieces being prepared locally as well. Then when the frames are complete they get handed off to Festka’s own graphic designer or a leading artist to finish a truly unique bike. Custom-made bikes typically take 6-8 weeks to be built, with average frameset costs between 3-6000€. While the some of the other (mainly off-road) bikes have been taken out of the catalog, Festka still does a lot of really custom work, so they sky is the limit.
