Rene Herse Cycles has always been about no-nonsense performance. Coming from a background of building prototype aircraft, our founder René Herse entered the cycling world in 1938 with a 7.94 kg bike—fully equipped with lights, racks and fenders—and rode it over 700 kilometers in the Concours de Machines. In 1973, once again he built the lightest bike of its day. Weighing just 6.8 kg, this road bike was right at today's pro bike limit—27 years before the UCI imposed a minimum weight. What would René Herse build today? Would he build ultralight carbon bikes like the OPEN x Rene Herse collab? (swipe) Probably—for rides that don't include luggage, rain or night riding, carbon is hard to beat. Would he also have refined his steel all-road bikes to the nth degree? (swipe) We think so—Herse and his riders loved long-distance adventures, and to get the best performance on those epic rides, fenders, lights and racks should be integrated into the bike, rather than added after the fact. And that works best with steel, which lends itself to attachments and is easy to customize. Carbon and steel may seem like polar opposites, but when you look at it from the perspective of ultimate performance for very different types of rides, both materials make sense. Want to know more? Head to the Rene Herse Journal (link in bio). #allroadbike #reneherse