Best of Bassi 2025

We've had a wonderful year at Bassi, with touring fans worldwide continuing to love the steel bikes we make.

Hog's Back frame arrival

We restocked (and sold out!) a small run of frames this year. Not to worry, we've got more coming in the same colours very early in 2026.

Bobby's Touring Coyote

This is exactly what this frame was always meant to do! This year it distinguished itself on a massive trip to rural Colombia that killed other bikes (looking at you Vince...). The breakdown he wrote is thorough.

Nitto Bassi Bobby Bar

Speaking of Roberto's fine industrial design work, the Nitto-made version of the Bobby Bar came out this year, with its 25.4mm clamp area allowing many more bikes to use them. Plus since they're made by Nitto they're even more good-looking than they were.

Keystone + Bassi Prototypes

We teased these early this year after riding them last year: the prototypes for what would become the Belmont were educational and really helped us figure out what we and Keystone wanted on the final design. We wound up selling most of the prototypes but we (and maybe Keystone) have a couple left.

The Belmont frames landing

Our collaboration with Keystone Bikes of Philly was finally real! We had some frames air-shipped so we could launch them at the Philly Bike Expo and a few weeks later the whole batch arrived. This all-road fast bike has proven really fun to build in various ways but is really comfy with drop bars thanks to its high stack.

Belmont launch at PBE 2025

Everything came together just right for our booth at the Philly Bike Expo: the air-freighted frames landed less than a week before the show and the complete demo bikes were being assembled at Keystone Bikes until the day of load-in at the convention centre. We were in Rando Alley with some storied framebuilders and bike companies and had a wonderful time showing off the new bike. No, you're not seeing double in that photo: we repainted and rebuilt the prototypes just in case the production frames didn't ship in time.

Belmont stock builds

We co-ordinated cross-border parts availability to be able to offer the same stock build at an affordable price at both C&L and Keystone: a handsome, quick randonneuse ready for adventure on any road you can think of.

Le Montréal arrival

A long-overdue restock of Le Montréal frames landed late this year, with some minor quality of life improvements. That's a lot of models we got in this year, holy cow, I just realized. We decided to showcase a bunch of different builds to demonstrate the frame's versatility, it's a really impressive all-rounder.

Troy and Julian put together a one-off custom

That's it in the photo above. The Japanese M's Bar is of course ideal for a city ripper like this, as are the DTH BMX tires on a 26" bike like the smaller Montréals, but we also needed to test some prototype hubs and cranks. So far so good, look for them to be available in 2026! This beaut is still available to buy, FYI.

Simon talks revision history on the frame

It's what I decided to keep as the closest thing to a road bike in my stable. Given that I swapped from a 52cm V2 frame to a 55cm V3 frame I figured it would be a good chance to go over how the development over time of the Montréal mirrors our place in the wider cycling industry and exemplifies our frame design philosophy.

Ben's retro racy big boy

This bike is unique in impressive ways. It almost feels like a cyclocross machine but made for city biking! The Memento rack is super powerful and the drivetrain and Paul mini-V brakes must feel so good. And yes folks, that is indeed a vintage Selle Idéale saddle. All compliments for that one go straight to Ben please. No reading link, but for sure open that picture in a new tab to look at the details.

Sam's Montréal

A classic bike mechanic's special but he put together a lovely collection of parts for this build! It's on a V2 52cm frame and is a sterling example of the custom city builds we've made over the years.

Paola's Rachel

Paola hand-picked her own components when she visited Japan, then had us put them on a bike. The effect is superb!

Adam Bell caps

We've been buds for many years and have worked with him the whole time, so why didn't we have him design a cap for us? We don't know either, it's weird, but we remedied it this year! He's probably the best designer doing it today, and the results are excellent.

Antoine's black-and-gold Hog's Back

The blingiest Hog's Back we've built? Quite likely. The parts are nice of course but it's all the yellow-gold anodized parts that do it.

Marianne's Purply Hog's Back

It's a classic colour combo with this colour frame, but this is a really fun and thorough interpretation!

Tyler's Demo Belmont

Sometimes a staff member has a good idea for a one-off fun build and we let 'em at it. This one's available at our 75 Villeneuve W store.

Path Less Pedaled reviews the Belmont

After riding it for months and discussing it in public a few times, Russ from the PLP youtube channel just released his final review of the Belmont, and he was as kind as he was fair! Julian went and picked up the review bike once Russ was done with it and rode it around Europe, and it's now home again.