Ambrosio — The Turin Rim Maker That Made a Rare Cameo in BMX (1923 to Today)

Legend Bike Co · BMX heritage series

Somewhere in Bill Ryan's notes for this library, this company got written down as "Ambrosia Rims." It's an understandable slip — the name rolls off the tongue that way — but the Turin rim maker that Fausto Coppi rode and Francesco Moser broke the Hour Record on twice is called Ambrosio, no A on the end. This page uses the correct name and tells the story straight, including the part that matters most for a BMX site: Ambrosio's actual footprint in BMX is real but small. It was never a mainstream American spec the way Araya or Sun rims were. It made one genuine, documented cameo — an Italian-built BMX race bike — and a handful of exotic collector builds. That's the honest story, and it's still a good one.

Ambrosio, not Ambrosia — settling the spelling

Every source that turned up for this page — the company's own history page, an Italian cycling trade retrospective, and BMX collector forums discussing period rims — spells the name Ambrosio. There's no bicycle-component company called Ambrosia in the record anywhere. Bill's notes had it as "Ambrosia Rims," which reads like a natural mishearing of a name that isn't common in American ears. The correct name, used throughout this page, is Ambrosio.

Turin, 1923 — a rim maker among many

The Ambrosio trademark was formally registered in 1923 in Turin by brothers Giovanni and Giuseppe Ambrosio, though the business itself is described as having started a few years earlier, also in Turin. It began with steel handlebars and stems; rims were a minor part of the early catalog. Through the 1930s, Ambrosio pushed into aluminum at a time when almost nobody in Italy was building alloy bicycle parts — the company built a demonstration all-aluminum bicycle in 1935 and had reliable aluminum rim production sorted out by the end of the decade, making it one of the only Italian makers of alloy bars and stems for a stretch of years.

After the Second World War, Ambrosio's alloy rims found their way onto the bikes of Italy's best professional racers, Fausto Coppi among them. By 1950 the company had grown past 100 employees. Giuseppe Ambrosio died in 1953 and was remembered in the Italian press as a pioneer of the country's cycling-industry manufacturing. That's the high point of the original company. The second generation that took over after him mismanaged the business, and by the early 1960s it had gone broke and stopped production entirely.

In 1961, Sergio Marzorati — whose own family, Marzorati Cerchi, had been making rims in Milan since 1932 — bought and relaunched the Ambrosio name, and pushed it into carbon fiber and disc-wheel work. That relaunch is where Ambrosio's most famous modern-era result comes from: Francesco Moser rode Ambrosio disc wheels to the Hour Record in Mexico City in 1984 and again in Stuttgart in 1988. It's worth flagging that Ambrosio's own current company website dates its history to "1932" and doesn't mention Turin at all — a discrepancy from the 1923 Turin founding documented elsewhere. The most likely explanation is that the company today counts its lineage from the Marzorati family's 1932 Milan rim-making roots rather than the original Ambrosio brothers' founding, since it was the Marzoratis who rescued and rebuilt the brand in 1961. Both dates are real; they just describe two different starting points folded into one name. This page states both rather than picking one and pretending the other doesn't exist.

One name-collision worth clearing up while we're at it: a search for "Ambrosio, Turin, early 1900s" also turns up Ambrosio Film, a pioneering Italian movie studio founded in 1906 in Turin by a different man named Arturo Ambrosio. Completely unrelated company, same city, same surname, easy mix-up. Nothing in that story belongs on a bike page.

The one real BMX bike — the 1980 Cinelli MX-1

Cinelli, the storied Italian road and track builder, put out a BMX race bike in 1980: the Cinelli MX-1 (also seen as CMX-1), a Columbus-cromoly frame built around a Campagnolo-adjacent parts kit. Restoration documentation on bmxmuseum.com and a separate, independently written build feature both confirm that the dealer-recommended, factory-kit wheel spec for the MX-1 ran Ambrosio rims, 36-hole, usually paired with Michelin or Pirelli tires. Period advertising for the bike appears to have specified tubular Clement or Nisi tires instead, but the Ambrosio-shod builds are what actually shipped and are what survive in collections today. This is the one place in the record where "Ambrosio" and "BMX" meet on a factory spec sheet rather than a swap-meet table — an Italian road-and-track rim maker equipping an Italian road-and-track builder's one BMX bike. It makes sense as a story, even if it's a small one.

Beyond the MX-1 — exotic builds, not factory spec

Outside the Cinelli, Ambrosio's BMX presence thins out fast. BMX collector forum consensus describes the rims as something that "wasn't a real popular rim back in the day" and typically turned up on "a higher-end build with rare, exotic parts" — matched with OMAS hubs, Son-Lite hubs, and Michelin tires. That's a premium, boutique European combination a serious collector or a well-funded rider might chase, not a factory line item. A crowdsourced list built by BMX collectors, cataloguing which rim brand shipped stock on which major American BMX bike — Diamondback, Redline, Mongoose, GT, Raleigh, Kuwahara, Hutch, SE, Auburn, Murray — doesn't include Ambrosio anywhere. That ground belonged to Araya, Ukai, Weinmann, Skyway, Sun, and ACS. One clarification worth making directly: Redline's Turbo Lite rim has a grooved brake surface that collectors describe as "Ambrosio-looking," but it's a Redline-branded rim, not an actual Ambrosio product, and the two shouldn't be conflated.

No specific sponsored rider or factory team tied to Ambrosio in BMX turned up anywhere in this research — a real gap, and worth stating plainly rather than guessing at a name.

What Ambrosio actually is

Strip away the BMX question and Ambrosio's real identity is unambiguous: a Turin rim and wheel maker whose reputation was built entirely in road and track cycling, on the wheels of some of Italy's greatest racers. That's still true today. Ambrosio Wheels currently builds across road, gravel, mountain bike, track, cyclocross, triathlon, e-bike, and handbike disciplines — a wide spread of modern cycling categories that doesn't include BMX. For this library, the honest framing is that Ambrosio made a real, one-time BMX appearance through the Cinelli MX-1, plus a handful of exotic period builds, and that's the whole of it. A page pretending otherwise would be selling BMX collectors a bigger story than the record supports.

Timeline

• 1923 Ambrosio trademark registered in Turin by Giovanni and Giuseppe Ambrosio; the business itself is said to predate the registration by a few years.
• 1930s Among the first Italian makers to build reliable aluminum bicycle rims, bars, and stems.
• Postwar Fausto Coppi and other top Italian pros ride Ambrosio alloy rims. Company grows past 100 employees by 1950.
• 1953 Giuseppe Ambrosio dies; remembered in the Italian press as a pioneer of the country's cycling manufacturing.
• Early 1960s Second-generation mismanagement runs the original company broke; production stops.
• 1961 Sergio Marzorati acquires and relaunches Ambrosio, pushing into carbon fiber and disc wheels.
• 1980 The Cinelli MX-1 BMX race bike ships with Ambrosio rims as its dealer-kit wheel spec — the one documented factory-level BMX tie.
• 1984 / 1988 Francesco Moser sets the Hour Record on Ambrosio disc wheels, Mexico City and Stuttgart.
• Today Ambrosio Wheels still builds in Italy across road, gravel, mountain bike, track, cyclocross, triathlon, e-bike, and handbike disciplines. No current BMX line.

Sources

ambrosiowheels.com/en/history — the company's own current history page. ciclicorsa.com, "Ambrosio: The Brand That Made Italian Cycling History" — Turin founding, the Ambrosio brothers, Coppi and Moser detail, the 1961 Marzorati relaunch. bmxmuseum.com — build documentation for a 1980 Cinelli MX-1 (bikes/cinelli/90508 and forum thread id 712345) confirming Ambrosio as the dealer-kit wheel spec; forum threads on Ambrosio BMX rims (ids 233755, 185058, 749416, 394895) for sizing, finish, and the "exotic build" collector consensus; forum thread id 598366, a crowdsourced OEM-rim-by-brand reference that does not list Ambrosio among major American BMX brands. sugarcayne.com, "1980 Cinelli CMX-1 Vintage BMX Racing Bike" — independent second build documentation corroborating the Ambrosio wheel spec. bmxproducts.com — confirms an active modern reproduction market for Ambrosio BMX rim decals. bmxsociety.com — thread titles located by search only ("Ambrosio Rim colors," "what year did the ambrosio wheels come out"); the site itself was unreachable for direct verification.

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