Francesco Moser Road

Ofmega SpA was an Italian motorbike and bicycle components company producing high quality components in a variety of ranges: including Master, Mistral (for both road and track), Mundial (a cheaper, slightly later version of Mistral), Competizione, Super Competizione, Linea, Premier, Gran Premio and CX for the road and Sierra for mountain bikes. The origins of the company are much debated. A plausible story is that Ofmega grew out of a company called Officine Mecchaniche Giostra (OMG), Ofmega being the first two letters of the first two words and the first and last letter of the last word. OMG itself appears to be related in some way to the earlier legendary brands ‘Magistroni’ and possibly ‘Gnutti’. On their 2003 web site Ofmega claimed to have in business for over 50 years, so there is probably some truth in the idea that they used other brand names or did sub-contracting work for other brands. The history of Ofmega’s patents sheds some light on these various stories. In a 1966 patent the company was referred to as ‘OF. ME. GA’, with full stops after the ‘OF’ and ‘ME’. It is not difficult to imagine that ‘OF. ME.’ stands for ‘Officine Mecchaniche’, but ‘GA’ is a bit more obscure. The company is described as being owned by Dino Perotti. The company had a reputation of making slightly (or really) innovative products that were made with to a very high quality. Ofmega took the radical step of having the Mistral parts designed by a serious professional industrial designer; Bruno Giardino of Studio Giardino in Turin.Their Mistral dérailleur range, made from a high density, strong plastic, were considered to be amongst the lightest on the market and, certainly, the most colourful. The Mistral range included five (possibly more) colour-coordinated groupsets (both front and rear dérailleurs and “Sintesi” pedals); Pink (“Maglia Rosa” – “Pink Jersey”), Yellow (“Maillot Jaune” – “Yellow Jersey”) and Blue (“Squadra Azzura” – “Blue Team” after the Italian national team), Black and Whitest/grey (it would be nice to think that this was the “Milk Race” but probably not).