Neil FitzGerald and Mark Reilly started working together back in the early 90s in SE London under the brand Omega. Mark already had a name for himself as a maverick, designing ground-breaking frames, but it was Neil with his background as a foundry patternmaker and industrial prototype modelmaker, who brought these designs to life.
“I would set the frame jig up from the sizes Mark had taken from a customer’s fitting and proceed to hand cut and file the bike mitre before drilling for bosses and gas vents. If it was a lugged frame we were making, I’d clean up the lug and file them to a point. I’d tack the frames in place on the jig before handling them over to Mark to braze in the vice, while I started on another.... My specialty was sculpting the fillet brazed joints to create a flowing transition between the tubes.”
Back then it was beautifully crafted, fillet brazed steel frames and smooth tig welded aluminium frames for racing, but it wasn’t long before Mark fell in love with the ‘magical’ properties of titanium.
When Omega relocated to Brighton, Neil stayed local and continued my model making path before entering the world of F1 motorsports as a patternmaker and subsequent model maker for the wind tunnel aerodynamics department at Williams McLaren and Mercedes.
The carbon fibre knowledge he gained from F1 lead him back to bikes and he rejoined Mark. First as Enigma, then Nerve in 2014 which morphed into Reilly Cycleworks. By which time, Neil and Mark were dedicated to creating beautiful, handcrafted titanium frames based on Mark’s renowned frame geometries. This love of titanium is still the backbone of Reilly today.
Despite Mark’s untimely death in 2021, Neilwas keen to steer Reilly to a new future. He appointed Chris Ratcliff as Business Development Director. With a nod to Reilly’s rich framebuilding heritage, it was time to forge a different direction which came with the launch ofFusion, a Ti aero road bike andReflexa gravel race bike. Both have garnered huge acclaim amongst reviewers and the public alike.
Chris and Neil continue to take Reilly forward with new and exciting offerings in the pipeline.
Contact Pedal Revolution to build your dream Titanium Reilly bike, the bikes are fully customisable from the finish and coolour of the frame, to the groupset choice from Campagnolo, Sram or Shimano and many many leading brands in terms of finishing kit and wheels to choose from. Norwich@pedalrevolution.co.uk