PRIME

Price: £1,349.00 (frame only)

From: Trillion Cycles, trillion.com

Of the three brands on test, Trillion Cycles is by far the youngest. Having formed this time last year, Trillion only officially launched to the public in early 2017 at the London Bike Show – seemingly coming out of nowhere. But as it turns out, there’s some pretty big investment going on behind this new name.

Trillion is owned by industrial mega-company the Liberty House Group, which specialises in producing steel and aluminium, while also working in metals recycling. Owner Sanjeev Gupta has made himself known in the UK thanks to a number of key purchases of declining smelting mills around the country, with the immediate goal of retaining local jobs and a long-term goal of repurposing those mills into metal recycling plants fuelled by renewable energy. In addition to his ambitious commodities projects and desire to bring manufacturing back to the UK, Gupta launched the Trillion brand as an homage to his father – an Indian steel tycoon who originally founded Victor Bicycles. However, Gupta is keen to assert that Trillion isn’t a vanity project, but rather a conscious move to kick-start bicycle mass production in the UK – a country that was once home to the biggest bike manufacturers in the world.

That’s some pretty big visionary stuff, and Trillion is still very much in its infancy right now. To begin with, Trillion is launching with a small, but focused range of bikes, including this one called the Prime.