Having produced bicycle tyres since 1953, Vittoria have made the move into the wheel market, launching with a 12-strong range.
The initial line-up is made up of six road and four mountain bike wheelsets, with the road wheels starting at £199 and rising to £1,499.
Let’s start at the top. The Qurano is Vittoria’s debut flagship wheel and comes in three depths with a 23.5mm-wide rim that follows the current trend that wider is better, giving the tyre a fatter footprint and thus offering improved stability and grip.
The carbon fibre rim is enhanced with graphene – dubbed ‘the material of the future’ by Vittoria and said to reduce temperature build-up, improve spoke hole strength and improve stiffness, while offering future potential to reduce weight. The result, Vittoria say, is a range of wheels which are faster, stronger and more resilient than traditional carbon fibre wheels.
The Qurano is currently only available as a tubular but Vittoria say a clincher is in development and graphene’s claimed heat reducing properties will be a major boon for riders rightly concerned by the heat build-up and subsequent delamination than can affect carbon clinchers.
All Qurano wheels use Vittoria’s tool-free SwitchIT hub, which has a replaceable freehub body removable by hand. Buy a spare freehub body and you could theoretically swap cassettes between flat and hilly rides by swapping freehub bodies, without the need for tools.
The Qurano 46 (which has a 46mm-deep rear rim and 42mm-deep front rim) costs £1,299 and has a claimed weight of 1,298g, the Qurano 60 costs £1,399 and has a claimed weight of 1,409g and the Qurano 84 costs £1,499 and weighs a claimed 1,573g.
Into the clincher range and the Fraxion has an aluminium/carbon construction, with a 45mm-deep front rim and 50mm-deep rear rim. The Fraxion has the same SwitchIt freehub as the Qurano range. Claimed weight is 1,698g and a set will cost you £899.
Meanwhile, the Elusion Nero is Vittoria’s shallow race clincher, with a 26mm/28mm aluminium rim at the front/rear. The brake track has a ‘Nero’ ceramic coating which is designed to offer improved braking performance (ceramic brake pads are included) in a similar way to Mavic’s Exalith treatment, plus it looks great, too. Once again, you get Vittoria’s tool-free SwitchIT freehub. How much do they weight? 1,576g. And the cost? £649.
Step down another level and the Elusion shares a similar design to the Elusion Nero but without the ceramic coating. The claimed weight nudges up a little to 1,591g as the wheels use brass spoke nipples instead of alloy but the price drops to £399.
Moving into Vittoria’s entry-level range and the Alusion is described as a ‘semi-aero’ wheelset, with a 32mm-deep aluminium rim. You get a conventional hub, rather than Vittoria’s SwitchIt design, and claimed weight is 1,790g. Yours for £299. Finally, the Session sits at the base of the range and is the Italian firm’s day-to-day training wheelset, with a shallow rim depth of 26mm. They’ll set you back £199 and claimed weight is 1,763g.
All wheels, from top to bottom, come with wheel bags, as well as a multi-tool which includes tyre levers, allen keys and spoke keys for on-the-go adjustments. All wheels also come with an individual QR code which allows the rider to register their hoops online, earning a warranty extension from two to three years, and log service and warranty information.
Website: Vittoria
