The story of the Allotec A32, aka Bassi’s first fork crown

Running a small bicycle frame and parts brand is a lot of fun. Aside from combining my passion for bikes and at least half-justifying my decision to go to design school, working with Bassi means we can sometimes take on funkier projects I know would not be possible with many other brands or industries. 

Bassi is not only a business, it’s also a partnership with four owners including myself. While that might sound like a lot of cooks in the kitchen, we see eye-to-eye on many things and almost all big decisions are agreed upon unanimously. As a big credit to them, my partners have more often than not given me “carte-blanche” to do whatever I want, and have basically always greenlighted my new product ideas. 

When Julian and I went to the Taipei Cycle Show in 2023, we were excited to finally meet the folks at Allotec. Of course, Bassi has mostly used Allotec fork crowns, seat lugs and drop outs since our inception in 2009. After a short chat, the idea of making our own investment cast goods came up and they agreed. Gears immediately started turning!

Of all the cast elements used in bike construction, fork crowns seemed like the most interesting area to start. On one hand they contribute so much to a bicycle’s silhouette and visual identity (it’s called a crown after all!) while also having pretty tight technical constraints within which to work. From steerer dimensions and fork blade shapes, to fender and tire clearances, strength tolerances, molding constraints, and so on. 

Shortly thereafter began the process of soul-searching, sketching, 3D-modelling, going back to sketching, back to modelling (this, a few times over), to eventually a 3D printed prototype before finalizing and validating the design with Allotec’s engineers. 

We initially wanted something for a (tentatively) upcoming revamp/revival of our archived road frame, the Casterino. The brief was to include clearance for wide(r) tires and it needed to look road-y, sporty, fast. 

Mocked with fork blades, a 48mm tire and Honjo H80 fenders

The result is an airy and light biplane design with a touch of drama. The sloped shoulders, the arched bottom and pointed blade sockets are nods to gothic revival architecture which features heavily in some of Montreal’s best known landmarks. The upper plane has a forward offset to give the crown a sense of direction, movement and speed. Like a bird flapping its wings. It was inspired by some of our favourite fork crowns and features generous clearance for tires realistically up to about 50mm.

In an era of carbon and 3D-printed metal, lost wax investment casting is still such an impressive way to make things. Here’s a look at how it works, courtesy of Daniel Yang from Artefact. Our fork crown, as minimal as it is and at a mere 139 grams, still exceeds stringent ISO testing requirements. Moreover, once the mold is paid for, the cost of production is impressively low.

With Allotec’s manufacturing approval, they also provided the quote for making the mold and producing the crown. Now, at that time, we were barely starting to carry framebuilding supplies. If you know what we do here at C&L / Bassi, you know we have many irons in the fire, as it were, basically all the time. A quick calculation of the amount of lugs we’d have to sell to a very specific and niche market in order to break-even made us flinch. We had a lot of other exciting projects on the way that couldn't all be done at once, choices had to be made. Luckily, in the same email detailing the production costs, Allotec offered to make the mold for free (!) if we agreed to them making the crown available in their catalogue to all their dealers. 

After much discussion, we decided to play it safe. In contradiction to what it means to be a designer we ultimately "gave" Allotec our design and thus agreed to dissociate our name from our creation.

I must admit, it was a little painful when I first started noticing “our” fork crown pop up in my Instagram feed. Framebuilders from all over the world quickly started using and highlighting this new, anonymous Allotec offering. After some time though, I flipped my thinking: “Wait, framebuilders from all over the world are using the crown, including Brian frickin’ Chapman!”

It now warms my heart to see the little crown I spent so many hours staring at and pondering be appreciated by people I admire. 

Machined for 1" and 1-1/8" steerers.

Being a small brand usually requires never skipping an opportunity to advertise your name, but sometimes you have to let some ambitions go. In my view, having this crown out there, albeit without our name on it, is better for our mission of promoting classic steel bicycle design and manufacturing than letting it die in my sketchbook. So spare us a thought the next time you see an Allotec A32 out in the wild! For framebuilders keen on using one, they're available here!

Studio shots by Troy.