Onguza Launches Customisable Bliksem Gravel Bike

The Namibian bicycle company Onguza has launched its new Bliksem gravel bike, which you can customise to your heart’s content, specifying everything from cable routing to frame graphics.

Former professional cyclist Dan Craven set up Onguza in 2021 in his home country of Namibia, and it released its first bike in 2022, the Gravel Model 1.

Now,after three years of progress,Onguza says the Bliksem is introducing a new way for you to design and order handmade steel bicycles.

“The business model we’ve always aimed for”

Onguza’s factory is in-house, making it “uniquely able to offer truly customisable, handmade framesets at a price much closer to mass-produced brands”.

As with the Gravel Model 1, Onguza’s frames have standardised geometry, but beyond that you can customise almost everything on the Bliksem gravel bike.

“This is the business model we’ve always aimed for, and finally we’re in a place to bring it to life,” says Onguza.

“The customer can select which of three different cable routing options they want installed on their frame, extra bottle and luggage bosses add-ons, all before your choice of paints and special graphics go on,” the brand says.

There are 18 frame colours and 10 graphics colours to choose from, inspired by Namibia’s landscape and culture.

A fast and responsive gravel bike

Taking its name from the Afrikaans word for ‘lightning’, Onguza says the Bliksem is its most responsive, fast gravel bike.

The steel gravel bike is said to have a “subtly aggressive geometry”, which avoids going too low on the stack figure.