On Thursday 25th of August we headed down to Swift Carbon’s Cape Town store and had an extremely intriguing chat with Neil Gardiner.
The store is located at the African Pride Hotel, on the first visit, the store was particularly easy to find, but I won’t mention the traffic you face heading into the center of town!
Neil himself handles marketing for the brand, so that’s why we meet with him, to discuss a demo-bike and just to simply get to know the brand better.
Swift’s Carbon Fibre
Neil explained to us what the heart of Swift Carbon really is, and that would be to build extremely high quality bikes, with no compromise what so-ever. The reason that Swift does not launch new models every year like other brands, is because they want to keep it small and intermate , if I can put it like that. They want to be able to focus on the quality of the bikes they already produce, some by perhaps tweaking every now and then with new technology.
Swift Carbon doesn’t implant any technology into their carbon fibre, instead they use great technological tools to develop their carbon fibre. Like every brand, they posses their own formula when making the carbon fibre, they know exactly what temperature the autoclave should be at, how to lay the carbon layers etc… Neil explains that it’s a case of trial and error when developing a working formula for their carbon, but eventually you get it right and then its better than best.
Their flagship bike is mainly the Hypervox, made with Swift’s highest grade carbon fibre and as areo as an arrow, if we must say so ourselves. However we are going to be testing the Attack G2 form Swift Carbon in the upcoming weeks.
I think the main thing I can take away from this, is the fact that Swift doesn’t just want to label their frames with technology, they just want to make good carbon fibre. And I think this speaks volumes to other brands, that it’s actually not about technology, it’s about what works and provides a ride without compromise.
Stay tuned in for more blogs.
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