See also: Ofmega documents

Country: Italy

Ofmega were based in Sarezzo near Brescia and were still in business until recently (and may still be so - but I cannot detect any signs of life).

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’. The Ofmega brand appeared to me to emerge from nowhere in about 1980. Despite this, in about 2000 they 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.

Either way Ofmega produced some of the more interesting Italian equipment available in the 1980’s. They also were co-sponsors of major cycling teams (at one time Gianni Bugno rode for Atala-Ofmega) and generally had an alarmingly high profile.

Ofmega’s better groupsets were called Premier, Mistral and CX and their less good ones were called Mundial and Master. More...