While some people match their watch to their shoes, Leon Baldinger has taken the philosophy to a new level: he’s matched his carbon fiber bicycle to his Porsche, right down to the brake calipers. The 30-year-old Swiss entrepreneur runs Leon Bikes, a custom bicycle boutique in Mellingen that treats two wheeled machines with the same obsessive precision Weissach reserves for its GT department. His own ride, a carbon road bike weighing 15 lbs, is finished in Olive Black with exposed carbon fiber and Speed Yellow highlights, the exact specification of his 911 GT3 RS.
Baldinger’s love affair with cars started early, probably much earlier than most Porsche fans out there. His parents brought him home from the hospital in a 911. Bicycles came soon after. He raced downhill mountain biking at a national level and trained as a bicycle mechanic, until a spinal injury on the trails ended those ambitions. Cars filled the gap that racing left behind.
In 2020, at the peak of pandemic uncertainty, he sold nearly everything he owned, bikes included, to open his shop. Terrible timing, by his own admission, with supply chains in chaos and customers wary of spending. It worked anyway. Leon Bikes now employs about a dozen people and builds custom bicycles.
His first Porsche was a 911 GT3, painted Arctic Grey, which he mirrored on a bicycle soon after. The GT3 RS that followed gave him a richer palette to work with. Every detail carries over. The model badge from the door is repainted onto the down tube. The handlebar wrap echoes the seat trim. The bike computer gets its own yellow 12 o’clock marker, just like the steering wheel. Even the brake discs are carbon ceramic on both machines, which feels like showing off, but Baldinger insists it is simply what performance demands, on two wheels as much as four.
A number of his customers order bicycles in Porsche colorways whether or not they own the matching car. The pairing, for Baldinger, is not a branding stunt. It is closer to something like consistency of taste, extended across every object he owns. On good days, when the shop allows it, both machines come out together, the GT3 RS hauling the bike on a roof rack for a morning drive followed by an afternoon ride. Those days, he admits, are rarer than he’d like. All things said, he’s still very much a lucky man.
