Redline

It's hard to grasp nowadays what a significant brand Redline was 40 years ago. Like SE, everything LOOKED right, but unlike SE, Redline's owner Linn Kasten actually had great business sense and they sold a lot of bikes.

You may not know it, but the tubular cranks that sit on your bike right now are direct descendants of Redline's 1980 Flight Crank, which changed the game completely. Before that we had to choose between one piece or alloy three piece road-derived cranks - neither of which were up to the job without flexing or bending. Byron Friday was the product tester there and this is how Redline came up with such durable products like the Brute stem (at a time when Ashtabula single-stems were standard) and the use of chromoly tubing on forks and the iconic V-bars.