Salsa Cycles was founded in the early 1980s by Ross Shafer in California. Initially, he focused on producing frames and custom stems.
Today, Salsa Cycles is based in Minnesota, USA and produces a wide range of bikes — mostly manufactured in Taiwan. The range includes touring, road and full-suspension mountain bikes, as well as components.
The company is known for producing the first gravel race bike (the Warbird) and the full-carbon ‘fat tire’ bike, the Beargrease.
In 1997 Salsa was bought by Quality Bicycle Products, which is also based in Minnesota and owns other brands such as Surly Bikes and All-City Cycles.
The Ala Carte was the name given to Salsa‘s production offering back in 1984 alongside the custom bikes and stems. Atlantan jeweler and photographer Steve West nabbed one in 1999 and it was recently reborn as a single-speed hot rodder.
We’ve spotted the Salsa Beargrease on the pages of The Spoken before, most notably being our review of it, riding along the soft sandy terrain of Sydney’s Cronulla Beaches. The bike raised the ire of a few readers because of its nature: that being a carbon fibre, race-bred machine — a different beast to most…
More and more cyclists are discovering the joys of off-road bicycle touring and adventure biking. Salsa Cycles have established themselves as a leading supplier of…
Salsa’s Fargo Ti is strategically engineered towards comfortable, long distance, off-road touring. It’s true that comfortable, long distance, off-road touring is perfectly possible on a…