It's 2010 and every performance road bike has to be made of carbon fibre or, at a push, titanium – right? Well, not according to everybody, and Endorfin provided one of the two complete aluminium bikes in the 2010 Bike of the Year test (with BMC combining aluminium and carbon fibre).
Endorfin still makes its bikes by hand in Germany, and the Speed has a distinctly retro appearance, with no fussy tubes in its burly aluminium frame, just straightforward lines. But the Speed does live up to its name.
Our testers described the frame as stiff, saying that it responds well to input and is not too jarring. One of our riders summed it up as “pretty lively, a classic race bike”.
It is perhaps a bit on the expensive side for an aluminium bike, but it does have some of the best wheels here, Fulcrum’s Revolution 3s, which contribute a lot to its performance. It’s not the bike for everyone, but it shows aluminium can still compete. And Endorfin does also make steel and carbon fibre bikes.