For a relatively small family business, Colnago has a huge amount of history. Just across the street from where founder Ernesto Colnago has lived for years, Colnago's factory and headquarters host a museum with machinery that has been under the ownership of everyone from Pope John Paul II to scores of world champions and victors of the world's biggest races.
Wild-shaped prototypes that never saw the light of day sit next to production bikes that won Paris-Roubaix, still encrusted with the mud from the Hell of the North.
Among the many notable designs are not one but two distinct milestones in road hydraulics. Colnago was first to market with a fully hydraulic disc-brake road bike with electronic shifting, the C59 Disc, in 2012. (BikeRadar took a test ride on an early prototype in April of 2012.) But Colnago's first attempt at hydraulic braking came much earlier, in a collaboration with Ferrari in 1986.
Take a closer look at these bikes and many, many more in the photo gallery at above right.
Colnago/Ferrari hydraulic brake levers, circa 1986
