This article was first published in Rouleur Issue 141

Superman might be known as the Man of Steel, but arguably he has more in common with titanium. The ‘wonder metal’ is incredibly strong, resilient, immune to ageing and carries humans with a surprising tenderness. And now, after a couple of decades of Dark Avenger dominance (that’s carbon fibre, obviously), all the signs are there that titanium is coming back. Combining dazzling beauty and cutting-edge technology, the latest bikes from titanium specialists such as No. 22, J. Laverack, Mosaic, Passoni, Enigma and Sturdy Cycles are spearheading an alternative type of progress. Is this Titanium 2.0?

“I don’t know that I would necessarily call it a comeback,” says Aaron Barcheck of Mosaic Cycles from Boulder, Colorado. “We started working with titanium in 2002 and we’ve seen a lot of it over the years. Perhaps carbon-fibre technology has taken centre stage because of manufacturing ease and marketing. But we’ve tried to stick with the way titanium was manufactured back in 2002 – we’re doing it the same way, with the same methodology. It’s been here the whole time.”

Perhaps that’s all part of the story of titanium. It’s been here all along, a force for good that’s always been poised to rescue cycling from anonymous, mass-produced plastic frames that pop out of a mould in Asia and all look the same. So why now? Let’s rewind a couple of centuries.

Titanium was discovered in 1791 in Cornwall by the Reverend William Gregor. He analysed a black sand from a stream near the village of Manaccan and deduced it was made up of the oxides of iron and an unknown metal, reporting it to the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall. It was given its name four years later by German chemist Martin Heinrich Klaproth, who was investigating a red ore. He realised it was the oxide of a previously unknown element, and he named it titanium, after the sons of the earth goddess in Greek mythology. When he was told of Gregor’s earlier discovery, he analysed it and confirmed that it too contained titanium. The Royal Society of Chemistry lists titanium, atomic number 22, as the ninth most abundant element on earth, almost always present in igneous rocks and the sediments derived from them.

But it wasn’t until 1910 that Matthew Hunter, working for General Electric in the USA, made pure titanium and then the more efficient Kroll process, developed in the 1940s, which became the standard method for commercial titanium production. When the US military saw what was possible with titanium after World War Two – in time for the impending Cold War – it funded the development of better alloys, crucially including one of 6% aluminum and 4% vanadium (Ti-6Al-4V) – still the most popular – and started using it in aircraft, missiles and naval systems. The awe-inspiring high-altitude Lockheed SR-71 ‘Blackbird’ reconnaissance plane of the 1960s, which flew at Mach 3 and set speed records that still stand, was vindication that titanium was literally weapons grade.

The cycling industry followed, and by the early 1970s, Teledyne in the US, Speedwell in the UK and Flema in Germany were producing titanium frames. Luis Ocaña rode a Speedwell Titalite during his 1973 Tour de France victory, but it was the American bike brands who really ran with it, and by the 1990s Litespeed, Merlin and Moots among others were the brands leading the titanium charge.

Litespeed was born out of aerospace: Bill Lynskey’s Southeast Associate machine works had been supplying specialised alloys to the aerospace and chemical industries since the 1960s. David Lynskey, Bill’s son and an engineer in the company, made a titanium bike for himself after a knee injury forced him to give up running. Litespeed launched in 1986 and immediately took off.

Lance Armstrong’s Motorola-badged Eddy Merckx that he rode to victory in the 1993 World Championships was reputedly made by Litespeed in Chattanooga; he again rode a Litespeed Blade time-trial bike with Trek branding in the 1999 Tour de France, and finally Litespeed’s own name appeared on the down tube of the Lotto-Adecco’s team bikes for the 2002 season, with Robbie McEwen bringing home the green jersey for titanium.

But titanium didn’t truly fit the professional ecosystem. It was more difficult than steel to weld, more time consuming and expensive to manufacture than aluminium. It was said that each frame was like a separate custom order, even though Lotto claimed to have used stock Litespeed geometry.

It also couldn’t be formed at that time into aerodynamic shapes and, as carbon technology advanced, especially after monocoque construction became viable, titanium’s days in the pro peloton were numbered – along with the other metals – and, by the mid-2000s, it had all but disappeared from top-level racing.

However, among connoisseurs, randonneurs and artisan frame builders, titanium’s reputation kept on growing. The reasons why professional cycling rejected it were the very same ones that made it that much more attractive to the handmade and custom bicycle scene.

“It’s an incredibly versatile material,” says Tom Sturdy of Sturdy Cycles. “The mechanical properties of it are very versatile. It suits the way that I like to work.” Sturdy, who has an academic background in aerospace engineering and sports biomechanics, set up in 2014 in Somerset, but has no plans for global expansion. In fact, he considers the size of his operation – a team of two – to be a competitive advantage. He uses CAD systems, precision CNC machining, and TIG welding to create components that he says rival anything made by much larger operations and, he says, being small allows him to maintain standards that wouldn’t survive scaling up, and to move quickly when he spots an opportunity. Sturdy is recognised as a unique innovator in titanium components – exquisitely machined chainrings, 3D-printed cranksets and even brake levers – and he reckons that doing it all himself allows him to innovate faster. Further, he points out, his customers are receiving components designed by the same people who machine them, inspected by the same people who programmed them.

Sturdy contrasts titanium with composites not dismissively but pragmatically, touching on the issues of sustainability and longevity. “Composites are really interesting as a material, but there’s a lot of waste, a lot of storage issues that I don’t really want to deal with in my really small workshop.” Titanium frames last indefinitely if looked after properly, require no paint, and at the end of their lives they are highly recyclable. In a world increasingly conscious of environmental impact, that’s important.

For builders like Sturdy, titanium is the right material both philosophically and practically. “The bikes that I’m designing and producing are very much sold as a lifetime bike for the customer. And it’s a material that customers inherently understand and expect that that’s what it’s going to be.”

Contrast that with carbon and WorldTour sponsorship, which enabled big brands to tell compelling stories about innovation, marginal gains and professional endorsement. Titanium’s advantages are subtler, longer-term and experiential. There are no annual product cycles or ‘last year’s model’.

And then there’s the cost. Titanium frames have always been expensive to produce, and even more expensive to manufacture domestically. As carbon became common from the mid-2000s and the price came down when production moved to Asia, there was a perception that titanium was niche, expensive or even outdated. “In the States there’s been a much stronger presence of titanium frame builders. In the UK, it’s come and gone a lot more,” Sturdy concedes.

So why does titanium feel relevant again now? Perhaps part of it lies in carbon’s success. Carbon fibre has reached a point of maturity where performance gains are increasingly marginal, and where differentiation can rely more on marketing than material science. For a growing population of riders, especially those spending their own money rather than riding on sponsorship, longevity, authenticity and craftsmanship matter more than weight and aerodynamics. There’s also the culture: handmade bikes are enjoying a renaissance because riders are looking for a connection to their equipment again, the stories behind the welds or 3D-printed cranksets, and objects that feel personal rather than disposable. Titanium aligns perfectly with that ethos.

“It kind of ticks a lot of boxes across the board,” says Sturdy. “And gives me a lot of versatility as to what type of bike it is that I want to design. It doesn’t have to be just one particular type.”

Sturdy is not the only one proving titanium bikes didn’t stop evolving in 2002. Perhaps most significantly, additive manufacturing – 3D printing – has begun to open up previously unforeseen new possibilities.

J. Laverack is one of the brands at the forefront of this shift. “We launched the Speed-form yesterday,” says the Rutland brand’s co-founder David Clow speaking at Rouleur Live in November 2025, “and it’s completely different. Titanium has allowed us to do some really interesting things.” The Speedform is, says J. Laverack, the world’s most bespoke, fully additively manufactured, aerodynamically optimised and CFD-tested titanium road bike. Made from three 3D-printed sections welded seamlessly together, the Speedform was developed in collaboration with Loughborough University, who carried out the CFD analysis.

J. Laverack’s work with additive manufacturing began with another collaboration outside of cycling – Aston Martin. That experience has filtered back into its own bike design. “The bikes can look totally different now,” Clow says, “and it was really exciting for us to be able to do something very different.” The J.Laverack Aston Martin .1R fused 3D-printed titanium lugs with carbon-fibre tubes with stunning results, with each bicycle taking 1,000 hours to produce and limited to 100 pieces.

This hybrid approach – 3D-printed lugs, nodes or junctions combined with carbon tubes – represents a potential future for titanium, one which Italian brand Passoni has been exploring for perhaps longer than the other titanium specialists. Its new model, the Animus Titanium AT-01 is, like J. Laverack’s Speedform, a truly aero bike but, says brand manager Matteo Visentini, it needed to achieve a perfect balance between heritage and innovation without overemphasising either. The titanium section – lower head tube, down tube, bottom bracket shell and chain-stays – focuses on damping, precision, and durability, while the upper carbon part – consisting of the top tube, seat tube and seatstays – adds lightness and performance. To achieve the desired shapes, Passoni completely reworked its CNC parts and designed new 3D-printed components.

However, says Visentini, the new 3D printing is not intended to be the focal point. “We’re not big fans of 3D printing for its own sake – we only use it where the shape demands it. On the AT-01 the head tube, the bottom bracket, the lower seat tube section and the dropouts are 3D printed, but the real challenge was to integrate those parts seamlessly. We didn’t want to draw attention to the technology; we see it as a means to an end, not a design feature. Our goal was to make everything look like a single, continuous piece – very clean and in the Passoni classic style.”

What’s striking about today’s titanium builders is that although they’re using the very latest applications and methods, they are clearly resistant to the language of tech trends. They prefer to focus on classic style, longevity, timelessness, customisation and artisanship. Mosaic’s website describes what the US brand does as “a showcase of timeless style and contemporary functionality”.

Barcheck still refutes the idea of a titanium revival. “We’ve been doing it the same way for over 20 years,” he says. “It’s been here the whole time.”

That continuity may be titanium’s greatest strength. It doesn’t need to reinvent itself every season and it doesn’t need validation by WorldTour teams. The material itself is a constant, but those who work with it are always innovating. The latest generation of titanium builders have not only caught up with carbon but they’ve leapfrogged it – and now, it seems, everybody wants a piece of it all over again.

We’ll probably never see titanium in the professional peloton again. Of course it will never be able to compete with the aerodynamics, stiffness and weight of carbon, even with university engineering department collaborations, but its relevance in 2026 lies elsewhere. As Mosaic says at the foot of the ‘about’ page on its website: “If you’re reading this, you get it. And we get you”. It almost echoes Superman’s line in the original movie when he catches Lois Lane in mid air after she falls out of a helicopter down a tall building: “Easy miss, I’ve got you.” She looks down and replies in alarm, “You’ve got me? Who’s got you?!” But now we know titanium better than that – we don’t need to ask. And don’t call it a comeback.