The Serotta Colorado CRL was the top-of-the-line lugged steel racing frame offered by Serotta in 1992 with some creative innovation that is still seen in today’s bicycles. It was the first racing frame to utilize tapered tubes to increase frame performance. The seat tube and downtube are swaged as well as butted, and increase in diameter as they approach the bottom bracket. Before this was done, tube diameters were round and consistent only varying in tube thickness to increase performance across frame materials.  Serotta had to facilities in house to be able to cut their own custom lugs for their custom sized tubes, a real game-changer at the time. Look carefully at the frame here and notice where the paint shifts color gradient, the tubes increase in size towards the bottom bracket. Tube tapering, swaging, shaping, and size variance is  commonplace in almost any frame construction now.

This bike is decked out in 1990’s glory – all alloy ergopower Campagnolo Record converted to 10-speed. No detail on this bike was spared, down the the 10-speed record hubs and skewers to the rest of the majority of period correct racing componentry on this machine.

At the time this bike was built, it was cutting edge, and rivaled by few other Made-in-USA hand-built bicycles.