Italvega

Italvega is a brand of road bicycles designed, specified, imported and marketed by the California-based bicycle distributor, Lawee, Inc., founded by Ben Lawee, who also created the Univega and Bertoni bicycle brands.

Italvega bikes were designed and hand-built within the noted Torresini workshop at the Torpado factory in Padua, Italy. They were built beginning in 1970 and continuing through the mid- to late-1970s before manufacturing was moved to Japan under the name Univega. All Italvega bicycles were made in the Torpado factory, but not all were high-end bicycles. Torpado made a broad variety of bicycles for different uses (including worker, comfort, BMT, ATB, and even motorized).

Ben Lawee

Ben Lawee, born in Baghdad, Iraq, immigrated to the U.S. at age 19.[1] Lawee attended business school at Columbia University,[1] and in 1959 purchased Jones Bicycles, growing the single store into a multi-store chain.[1] He sold the retail chain in 1965 to begin importing Bianchi and Legnano bikes,[1] and became the national distributor for Raleigh and Motobécane. Lawee, who had two children, David and Monique, with his wife Ariela, died November 8, 2002.[1]

Models

Models manufactured under the Italvega marque include (in order of increasing quality):

The top-end models were built with double-butted Columbus tubing and Campagnolo Record and Nuovo Record components. The low-mid level framesets have the inverted triangle Columbus foil decal, while the better models have the rectangle Columbus foil decal. The lowest models have no Columbus decal.

• Viva Sport
• Nuovo Sport
• Nuovo Record
• Super Record
• Super Speciale
• Super Light

2017 Restart

In 2017, the brand was re-registered in the Netherlands by Nicholas Hurenkamp, who is seeking to fund a production facility in March 2018 through crowdfunding.[2] The new brand markets two models - the Super Speciale and the Nuovo Supersport, both of which are completely hand painted.[3]

External links