TD01 Air

Carrera Podium is the racing marque founded in 1989 in Brescia, Italy, by Davide Boifava, himself a former professional and the team manager of the legendary Carrera Jeans squad. In the late 1980s and early 1990s that team carried Stephen Roche, Claudio Chiappucci and a young Marco Pantani, and the frames were literally built in the same building where the team worked, so the riders doubled as product testers. The workshop claims more than 500 wins in Europe's hardest races and pioneering work such as one of the first aluminium-to-carbon bonded frames and the first made-in-Italy custom-sized carbon frame. Today, still family-run (now led by Davide's son Simone) and turning out a few thousand frames a year, Carrera Podium sits in the small-volume, boutique-Italian tier alongside the likes of Colnago and Wilier. The TD01 Air is its aero road platform: a wind-tunnel-shaped carbon frameset aimed at riders who want that Italian race pedigree without the mainstream-brand markup. Crucially, it must not be confused with the unrelated budget 'Carrera' bikes sold by Halfords in the UK - a completely different brand that happens to share the name.