Vitus was a French bicycle manufacturer best known for its steel cycle frame tubing, and its frames built with aluminium tubes joined to aluminium lugs by bonding - a construction method the company pioneered in the late 1970s . Compared to modern aluminium bicycle frames, early Vitus aluminium frames, such as the 979, offered more comfort because of the small diameter of the tubes. As a result, the frames lacked some degree of lateral stiffness compared to their steel counterparts. now based in Ireland- http://www.vitusbikes.com/-