And from another thread, we have the Canyon aluminum frame that meets the OP's objectives.

https://www.canyon.com/en/road/ultimate/al-slx/

I have a 19-year old Klein, I am not looking forward to the day I have to replace him... can't imagine a better handling bike - efficient up hills, and solid coming back down.

Doesn't appear to be available as a frameset on the US site.

https://www.canyon.com/en-us/

Wow--that Ultimate AL SLX frameset is really nice! So this one is not available to US buyers?

Those welds look very industrial-- not so noticeable on a bottom bracket but they sure don't look pretty on a top tube.

All kinds of the framesets in this thread from the big brands appear not to be available in the U.S.

Looks to be part of their aesthetic. They've got some kind of Bibendum resonance going on there. Yeah, you either like it or you don't. I think it's cool!


De gustibus non est disputandum

Here are my two aluminum steeds. The black and red one is a VanDesell Hellafaster and the Specialized is a Sprint X2 special edition.

IMG_20171005_144850788_HDR.jpg

IMG_20171016_103537765_HDR.jpg

IMG_20171005_144935419_HDR.jpg

I thought his TT was pretty spot on.

The first Cannondale frame was 1983 but it was hand made, hand mitered , hand welded. I remember wanting an AL frame badly early 90's, and while I had heard of Vitus, and was told it was a boutique , hard to find, and very whippy/flimsy frame, I did not hear of Cannondale until later, maybe that was a local thing? At that time, 1992 I bought my first high-perf. AL road bike, Trek 1400 was internally lugged and Epoxy bonded and my understanding is it was the first trulymass produced AL frame?

maybe mid 90's? That's when I remember seeing welded AL CAD's and Colnago's popping up. My frame already felt obsolete by then. It's an interesting topic as I started off my road biking days on AL so very nostalgic for me.

I think ARC welding bicycle frames at that time, mid/late 90's, made some huge strides as Reynolds started releasing tubing that would heat treat itself at the weld joint and become stronger instead of becoming brittle. That's when you saw the lugs and brazing rods really going away AFAI recall.

Trek made nearly 3k alu bikes across 3 models in '85, 1,290 of which were the 2000. The following year, in '86, they made over 10,000 alu frames, more than 4k of which were 1000s. (Trek Bike Production Data by Model from late 1980 through 1986)

Mass produced alu bikes were widely available in the mid '80s.

I may have been off by a few years... but the general idea remains.

One can't say that aluminum frames are stiff, then hop on an early Vitus frame for a good stiff ride.

The Aluminum has been evolving quickly in design, form, and function, both to make stiffer main triangles, and allowing some compliance in the rear triangle.

And the aluminum is here to stay, even if most of the pro racers are still riding carbon fiber composite frames.

Thin tubes, thick tubes, oversized tubers... are all put there for a reason.

Yeah, well, it was a long time ago, and there was a lot going on back then!

In 1977, Gary Klein patented use of large diameter aluminum alloy tubes to increase stiffness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klein_Bikes

Oversize aluminum bikes/frames -- 1975 -- USA -- Gary Klein displays his welded and heat-treated aluminum frames with oversize tubing at the International Bike show [L.A.]. Klein’s frame was the result of an MIT design project in the early 1970’s under Professor Shawn Buckley. Alan (Italy) and Vitus (France) were producing their lugged aluminum frames around the same time. Cannondale launched their “Aluminum for the Masses” in 1983. (Background on the Klein/MIT connection courtesy of John S Allen and Donald W. Gillies).

Bicycle History

My carbon fiber bicycle was also made in about 1976.

That doesn't mean that the 70's was the peak of the carbon fiber revolution in the bicycle world.

That's a non sequitur, but I don't disagree!

10 years before the first Kestrel? What is it?

Graftek made a frame with carbon fiber wrapped around aluminum tubes. Early ones with plain steel lugs, and late ones with stainless lugs.

great! thanks for bursting my bubble, and here I thought I was actually a Pioneer for something

yeah it was evolving quickly but in 1992 the 1400 AL frame/AL Fork was an AWFUL ride. I remember coming home from a 75 miler and all 10 of my fingers were completely numb from the buzzing of the AL fork. I did not regain any sensation in my fingertips until 24 hours later.
The only thing that makes an AL frame something to even consider today, IMHO, is a Carbon fork. I still remember the feeling after putting one on my 1400, threaded steel 1" steerer with Carbon legs, it became a completely different bike. It would still pound your lower back pretty hard but I think today they can dial that in with special tubing?
I read comments on here from people who say they can barely tell their new AL frames apart from their Carbon and it blows me away. Now THAT is some awesome technology in frame building.

Alan intro’d a carbon tubed, alu lug frame in ‘76.

Can we all agree scandium isn't ready for prime time-- too brittle. My salsa split at the bottom of the head tube.

They look like standard double-pass aluminium welds to me. Most aluminium frames have something like that, if not the standard single-pass ones that look even more industrial.

The Condor Italia RC is one of the hottest aluminum framesets IMO, because the geometry is just dead-on for my tastes. It looks great, I think, too. Getting one to the US would land it at about $1.1k, so within spitting distance of the OP’s mark, probably.

https://www.condorcycles.com/product...ia-rc-frameset

In this instance it probably is the case that it is the "look" that they're after whereas I believe the standard attempts to evoke an understanding of a great deal of precision that has gone into the constructions of the tubes being used to fabricate the frame, such as...

No doubt they want to make some kind of statement...

Precise yes, but that looks like high tech Taiwanese computer controlled welding to me. The "offset stack of dimes" fillet style is more expressive of artisan handworking, IMO.

Can't say that it looks more robust than the Allez SmartWeld a few posts above.

I'm not sure the idea of expressive TIG-welded artisanship– inspired marketing though it may be– is a sufficient substitute for having a double butted custom hydroform aluminum tube to begin with...