eBay Finds: Late 2000s Cannondale SystemSix frameset

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Our latest find on eBay is this rather rare, and brand-new, original Cannondale SystemSix frame and fork, as used in the late 2000s by the Italian Liquigas squad. What looks to us like a first, 2007 edition of the frameset boasts a carbon main triangle and, somewhat unusually, an aluminium rear triangle, designed to offer racers the ideal combination of stiffness and comfort.

Our latest find on eBay is this rather rare, and brand-new, original Cannondale SystemSix frame and fork, as used in the late 2000s by the Italian Liquigas squad. What appears to us to be one of the first, 2007 editions of the frameset boasts a carbon main triangle and, somewhat unusually, an aluminium rear triangle, designed to offer racers the ideal combination of stiffness and comfort.

During the 1990s and into the 2000s, Cannondale were best known for their excellent CAAD (Cannondale Advanced Aluminum Design) frames, which proved popular with sprinter Mario Cipollini's Saeco team, in particular. The team merged with Lampre to become Lampre-Caffita in 2005, but still rode Cannondales, before plumping for Wilier bikes in 2006.

Liquigas were still on Bianchi bikes in 2006, but moved over to using Cannondales in 2007. With the arrival of the SystemSix, the team's riders had a choice that season between it and the all-carbon, and slightly more forgiving, Synapse, which had made its first appearance a couple of seasons previously, and began Cannondale's gradual move – like most other manufacturers – towards carbon-fibre frames from high-end aluminium ones.

The SystemSix was constructed at Cannondale's Bedford, Pennsylvania, USA, plant, and was designed by Norwegian engineer Torgny Fjeldskaar – who now works for BMC. The model later morphed into Cannondale's flagship, all-carbon aero road bike – as used in 2020 by US WorldTour team EF Pro Cycling – and so this early version is regarded as somewhat of a unicorn by Cannondale disciples.

"The SystemSix was designed for one purpose, and that's performance," team liaison Rory Mason told Cyclingnews back in 2007. "The attributes that we've designed into this frame to achieve that were a high level of frontal stiffness or rigidity, while maintaining very light weight as well.

"The top tube is ovalised on a horizontal plane so that it's very stiff side-to-side for accelerations, and we have a very large down tube, which comes in two different size-specific diameters," he said.

This Italian eBay listing has the frameset going for a tempting £749 (€846/US$927), with that special rear triangle already well-wrapped-up and protected in the pictures, ready to be posted out to the lucky 'winner'.

It's a 60cm frame, so up at the larger end of the scale of frame sizes, with an uncut steerer-tube on its carbon fork, and a headset and spacers included. The seller also notes that the frame colour isn't solid black, but unidirectional carbon with a gloss coat, and it appears to fade into blue from the midpoint to the back of the frame, making it quite the looker in our eyes.