This article first appeared on BikeRadar.
Legendary Italian bike maker Colnago has announced its first proper aero bike and it’s called the Concept. In the appropriately grand setting of a German castle in a small town just up the road from the Eurobike trade show, Ernesto Colnago himself unveiled the new machine, which joins the C60 and the V1-r to complete the brand’s range of top-end race bikes.
The new bike’s name harks back to the original 1986 Colnago Concept, the company’s first carbon bike which was the result of a collaboration with Ferrari. But while the eighties Concept was a showcase for innovation, the 2017 version is a full-production, monocoque carbon aero bike with all the features you’d expect of a modern racer.
According to Colnago, the aim of the new Concept is the same as with every other bike it produces: it’s “to make cyclists faster”.
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Aero design
You can’t design an aero bike without going to the wind tunnel these days, and that’s exactly what Colnago did, working through 41 variations of the Concept frameset to come up with the finished product. The result is a bike that bears some resemblance to other mainstream aero offerings, but which differs in the finer details.
Claimed frame weight is 990g without paint, plus 400g for the fork. As with the V1-r, the framesets are manufactured in Taiwan and finished in Italy.
According to Colnago’s own numbers, the Concept offers stiffness numbers that are within a few percentage points of the C60 and V1-r, but quite a bit less vertical compliance. The flipside is that a medium sized rider at a zero-degree yaw angle will save approximately 20 watts at 50 km/h against the C60, and 4 watts against the V1-r. Small beans? That’s up to you to decide.
Interestingly, Colnago made a point of saying that the Concept offers aero benefits for every one of its eight sizes, something some bike manufacturers don’t really talk about. The most visible manifestation of this is at the seat stays where the larger sizes have a slightly different seat tube profile near the tube junction and allow air to flow between the stays.
Colnago Concept fork
Colnago Concept downtube and bottom bracket
Colnago Concept brakes
Colnago Concept pricing and availability
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
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