From 1952 Pinarello has been building quality road and track racing bikes from its factory in Treviso, Italy.

The company is one of the most successful in the history of the Tour de France, with Oscar Pereiro, Jan Ullrich, Pedro Delgado, Bjarne Riss and Miguel Indurain all successfully piloting Pinarello bikes to the podium.

Pinarello has had plenty of involvement with professional racing sponsorships, most famously with the Telekom team that dominated racing in 1996 and 1997.

Heading the Pinarello range in 2009 is the Prince Carbon, an incredibly light (6700 grams) but powerful and responsive unit that is now the ride of choice for many professional cyclists.

Also growing in popularity is the 2009 FP3 model, which can be customized according to preferred groupset and which is considered to be very fast.

The success of Pinarello’s current range suggests the company will continue to provide cycling innovations for a long time into the future.

In 2004 Cannondale really picked up the pace with its carbon/alloy composite Six13 model, a bike that became popular very quickly and sold plenty of units.

The following year the company launched its first all-carbon effort, the Synapse model. The Cannondale Synapse aims to mix the level of performance that good riders want on the road with the comfort factor needed for distance riding.

Cannondale has a rich history of sponsoring professional road racing teams, starting with the Saeco team in the late 1990s. That team was highly successful and won the Giro d’Italia three times.

In 2007 Cannondale sponsored the Team Liquigas effort, leading to another Giro win through Danilo Di Luca.

Among the most highly rated Cannondale products to leave the factory floor is the CAAD9 project, which was a low cost way of getting a very good road bike.

Cannondale has come a long way since its inception in 1971 and it will hopefully continue to create excellent aluminium road cycling options.

The company started in 1895 and, after a long life of mixed successes, went bankrupt and was bought by Pacific Cycle in 2001.

In 1938 the company introduced what was to become the defining unit of the company, the Schwinn Paramount series.

The Paramount was a high-end model that became incredibly successful and was viewed as a leader both in terms of design and performance.

Schwinn rose to market dominance on the back of the Paramount and later expanded into mountain bike and BMX manufacturing.

Today, Schwinn’s model list is headed by the Series 9 Paramount, which runs an SRAM Red groupset and is fully carbon, supported by Mavic wheels.

The Belgian champion won the Tour de France and the Giro d’Italia five times each, the Vuelta a Espana once and set the hour track record at Mexico City in 1972.

Merckx’s legacy lives on in the bikes created at the factory that sports his name and operates in his hometown.

The bikes produced by the company are of the highest quality and are targeted at professional racers.

Currently the company is offering two top-line models for purchase, the EMX-3 and the EMX-5.

The EMX-5 is the flagship model for the manufacturer, offering fantastic stability, power and consistency.

Cervelo began in 1995 when Phil White and Gerard Vroomen teamed up in Toronto to build racing bikes.

The pair had designed a radical time trial bike that is possibly the most aerodynamic design ever raced.

Today, Cervelo sponsors a professional cycling racing team known as the Cervelo Pro Cycling Test Team.

The team will race in the 2009 Tour de France and will be led by last year’s winner, Carlos Sastre, who cruised to his 2008 victory aboard the Cervelo SLC.

In the 2009 event the team will use three Cervelo models – the S3, the R3SL and the P4 – in its quest for yellow jersey glory.

Road cycling enthusiasts have taken notice of the outstanding professional performance of the company and fans of its products are quickly growing in number.

The Cervelo R3 has proven incredibly popular and is perhaps the best top-end road bike on the market at the moment.

The company actually began as a weapons maker in 1840, but in 1930 and at the end of the Spanish Civil War it shifted its focus to bicycles.

One of the most striking and popular elements of the business is the ‘made to order’ function, which allows Orbea customers to nominate specific conditions for the creation of their bikes.

The 2009 Orbea road cycling range begins with the Enol, an entry-level bike primarily used for commuting, and tops out with the Orca, a serious machine that is used by top professional cyclists.

Orbea has partnerships with several top professional road racing teams, including Euskaltel-Euskadi (based in Basque) and the Herring Gas Cycling Team from the US.

The company made its start when a 21-year-old, Edoardo Bianchi, started building bikes in a small shop in Milan in 1885.

A point of distinction for Bianchi bikes is their trademark ‘celeste’ colour, which is a shade of turquoise that is sometimes also referred to as Bianchi green.

Bianchi sponsors a professional road racing team called Barloworld, which received a wildcard entry in the 2008 Tour de France but did not perform well and was not invited to the 2009 race.

The lead Bianchi road bike on the market right now is the 928 model, which makes use of carbon fibre but claims to be almost 50% more durable than its competitors.

The breakthrough for Scott was the aerodynamic handlebar design that helped Greg LeMond win the 1986 Tour de France.

In that same year the company developed its first mountain bike and in 1991 it went further to build the first front fork suspension, called ‘Unishock’.

In the background the company was slowly building its road racing profile, until 2002 when Patrice Halgand won stage 10 of the Tour de France using Scott equipment.

Scott now sponsors the professional racing team Team Columbia-High Road with equipment.

The Scott CR1 road bike has proven to be a serious hit with casual road riders, because of its economical price and good quality componentry.

The flagship model for Scott, however, is the Addict, a carbon fibre bike that weighs an extremely light 790 grams.

Scott has had great success with road bike manufacturing in recent times and you can expect to see the company consolidate its growing stature in the market.

The major point of difference between Litespeed and other bike manufacturers is that the company exclusively produces titanium bikes.

Although Litespeed experimented with carbon fibre and aluminium models between 2002 and 2006, it has returned to exclusively building titanium models in the past few years.

The bike ridden by Lance Armstrong in his 1999 Tour de France win was in fact a Litespeed Blade model sporting Trek labels.

The company has an interesting relationship with NASA, and helps the space agency with projects that require titanium-intensive assembly.

Heading the current Litespeed range is the Archon model, a racing bike that relies on a traditional threadless headset and has a terrific power transfer.

The company started out in 1972 and originally just produced bikes to be branded by other companies such as Schwinn and Nishiki.

The number of bikes produced by Giant is astounding; more than 4,700,000 were built in 2002, for example.

An important part of the company’s focus and branding is its participation in marquee cycling events like the Tour de France.

Giant sponsors the Rabobank professional road cycling team, which will be a big chance to take out the 2009 Tour de France.

Giant’s flagship road bike is the highly rated TCR model, which is ridden by Team Rabobank and is said to handle like a dream.

Another popular riding choice from Giant is the OCR range, which is less expensive than the TCR series and is more suited to commuting and weekend riding.