Long before you could fit a pump in your pocket or have it hanging off the side of your bidon cage like a cigar-shaped tumour or silver turd, way before you could screw a tiny chuck on a Co2 canister and freeze your fingers to it on a winter’s day, the frame pump was the undisputed king of inflating your tubes, or more likely, tubulars. Bikes were naked without them, and most good frames were equipped with a pump peg or two to mount your Silca to.

Notice I say Silca and not Zefal? Just as Campagnolo was seen as the groupset of choice, or more likely the one to aspire to, the Italians were preferred to the French when it came to pumps too. Maybe it was all down to style, but the fact was that the Zefal, while a good functional pump, just didn’t stack up against the Silca… especially if you were rocking a Campa head on your silver stick. Then, there was no contest. Industry standard, if ever there was one.

I was one of those poor souls who couldn’t afford either Campa parts or even the Impero pump, and had a Zefal HPX in service until the early 2000s, when bikes were beginning to be made from materials that allowed curvy tubes and junctions, but were not conducive to sticking a pump into its corners (there were no corners anymore).

Then pumps started shrinking, some to ridiculous sizes, and praying for no flats was preferable to having to inflate a tyre to 100psi with what amounted to a five-inch-long fart. The solution was to ride as much with my friend Col, who, being impervious to fashion or trends and a doyen of function over form, continued to tape a Zefal to his carbon machines. Every time there was a puncture, Col knew he’d be inevitably called to service within seconds. Everyone loved using his pump, but no-one was brave enough to mount one on their own bike. But we always made sure Col was fully equipped.

When news filtered through of Silca being revived as a brand and the Impero making a comeback as the all-new-from-the-ground-up Ultimate, thoughts turned to not how it would perform, but how it would look on a modern bike. Mine being a traditionally configured, double diamond, flat top tubed steel frame, I figured it would look pretty right. And it does.

Remember how I mentioned pump pegs? Well, Silca hasn’t forgotten them either, with a nod to modern framebuilders who include a peg or two on their frames. The indent in the end of the handle will fit the peg in nicely, and the rubber end-cap is concave and tapered to hold tight against non-pegged frame tubes. Silca claims around 100 strokes for 90-100psi, around a third to a half of the time the better mini-pumps take. Your mates’ grumbling time is greatly reduced.

The rubber bumper/grommet serves two purposes, to bump and to… grom? When the pump is mounted along the frame tube, it acts as a vibration damper, and when slid up tight against the handle it helps to prevent the pump from bouncing loose by keeping the spring from compressing and dropping your investment onto the road and into the path of a lorry.

The Ultimate can be mounted in either direction, and since taking these photos I’ve swapped the orientation with the head of the pump nestling a little more firmly at the seat/top tube junction. The head itself is minimal and Presta-specific, and the twin seals hold the valve securely while you’re using those long strokes to get the air in. The head is made from US military-grade silicon (no shit!) and the same Italian company that has made the leather piston washers since the 1940s are still doing so for the Ultimate.

Tight. Josh at Silca USA tells me that the Ultimate has been popular not only with traditionalists and crusty old steel afficionados, but also young guns, even Pros, who are all about the functionality but have grown to appreciate the aesthetics too. All the Silca products are now made in the States, and since the buy-out of the Silca name the new company has placed itself right back at the forefront of the inflation game, due in no small part to the Impero.

Yep, that looks pretty right. The Impero Ultimate is not cheap, but its quality all-metal construction should ensure that this pump will outlast you and several of your bikes. It can be painted to match your frame, but with mine in service on four bikes, the black ensures that it will match all of them and still not take anything away from each one’s looks. It’s a piece of kit with classic heritage and modern technology mated perfectly, and it works.

*We’ll bring you our long term impressions of the Impero in a few months when we’ve put it through a few thousand strokes