The Zenith of Frame Building
In April, 2005, when we visited the Cyfac factory located just an hour's drive outside Tours, France in the stunning Loire Valley, we were introduced to a frameset in process. Named the Gothica, a beta-version frameset and unassembled tubeset were set aside in a room replete with Cyfac's glorious cycling accomplishments and situated next to Francis Quillon's design studio.
Aymeric LeBrun, Cyfac's Product Manager, and the notorious Francis Quillon himself explained to us that the tubeset of what would be the production size medium Gothica weighed in at a mere 600 grams! We handed around one of the rear seatstays and were dumbfounded: it seemed to weigh no more than a legal-sized sheet of paper!
The carbon used in the Gothica's construction is based on Mizuno's premier and amazingly tightly woven proprietary 1K weave, as seen, for example, in the Mizuno Fiandre forks found on high-end De Rosas and Wiliers. Although Mizuno has had a patent on this weave for a long while, the Dutch company Advanced Composites is now licensed by Mizuno to utilize this particular carbon weave expressly for Cyfac. Mr. Quillon explained to us that this particular weave, which is finer than any you'll ever see on other bike frames, is in fact the most expensive in the world to manufacture, but is also the finest for producing the kind of "reactivity" for which Cyfac frames are famous.
The Gothica is light. Extremely light. The production version of the size medium comes in at 990 grams; that is a lugged frame! It stands to reason that a similarly sized full custom version of the Gothica will weigh even less as it will be carbon/Kevlar "welded" rather than lugged. But there is a caveat: the production Gothica is not for everyone. The reactivity of a frame this light is such that it will function better for lighter and more skilled cyclists. There is no rider weight limit for the Gothica; rather, the behavior of a frameset this light will best be harnessed and tamed by cyclists of a more slight build. Despite this, Cyfac has made custom Gothicas for riders in excess of 200 pounds. In such cases, the lay-up of carbon and Kevlar at critical junctions has to be addressed for rider-specificity.
Another facet of the Cyfac Gothica is that it has an uncanny finesse to its ride. The Gothica is not designed or constructed to be "stiff" in the most vulgar use of that term. Of course, the Gothica is appropriately stiff where it needs to be: the head tube, the fork, and the chain stays. But the behavior of the bottom bracket provides a feeling of almost springiness, of lightness and crispness, similar to steel frames of the 1980s. This is not to say that the Gothica cannot be a full blown race machine: it is indeed that! A number of Cadence athletes and racers ride and win on Gothicas, and they universally extoll the Gothica's virtues--just as Bicycling Magazine did when they dubbed the Gothica the "perfect ride."
With the introduction of the Gothica at the 2005 Interbike Cyfac again demonstrated that even though it is an extremely limited production company--with total production capacity of about 1,500 frames per year (and only 375 Gothicas manufactured in 2006!)--it is nevertheless dedicated to building technologically advanced and cutting edge framesets in the old world tradition. The Gothica represents the absolute zenith of frame building by distilling the best of knowledge, craftsmanship, passion, design and technology into one amazingly refined work of high-performance art.