Oh wait, beautiful too – although I think we can add that one to the Concept’s list already. The Concept is a step closer to the Holy Grail of fast, stiff, responsive, stable and comfortable, all at once. However, these things shouldn’t detract from what a highly capable bike this is for everything in between. It’s not quite punchy enough up steep ramps, and lacks a little stability when descending over 75kmh, where fore aft wobble through the frame is detectable. Yet, for all its mastery, the Concept falls just short of being a masterpiece, and it’s down to its behaviour at the extremes. It’s not quite on the snappy level of the Bianchi Specialissima, say, but it is readily more stable and feels incredibly robust without feeling slow or heavy. On the flat or through lazy corners the Concept feels cruisy and planted, but turn the screws in a sprint and rag it through some twists and it roars into life.
The result is almost like two bikes in one. The 2014 Bel Aire 2. 1994 was a hallmark year when Colnago introduced the ground-breaking C40 carbon fibre frameset for his 40th anniversary and still a reference point today. It owes a lot to the borrowed geometry, which is nearly identikit to the C60, but also to whatever magic is going on in the carbon layup and tube shapes. The State Bicycle Co Bel Aire 2.0 has replaced the very popular State Bicycle Bel Aire. In 1989, two years later, the dramatic Colnago C35 emerged, an innovative monocoque carbon fibre frame in road racing & mountain bike versions. The C60 remains to this day the best-handling road bike I’ve ridden, and the Concept is within spitting distance – something that’s doubly amazing when you consider this is an aero bike. I had no reason to expect the Concept to be that fast, so the fact it possessed a palpable lick of speed was surprising. It has several cables on show, an absence of one-piece bar and stem, and – horror of horrors – regular brakes.ĭirect mount, but in traditional positions, with Fumagalli diplomatically adding that the under-stay rear brake of the semi-aero Colnago V1-r ‘had a few downsides’. The Concept, by contrast, is kind of normal. But those bikes are part of an über-group of aero bikes where no springy flap or hidden cable has been left unturned, and they do make concessions to ride quality. I’ll reserve judgement on the distance between Colnago’s chest and its cards, except to say that I have definitely ridden faster bikes than the Concept – the Specialized Venge ViAS and the Trek Madone come immediately to mind. ‘Tests show the Concept saves 20 watts over our C60 and 4 watts over the V1-r with a medium rider pedalling at 50kmh,’ says Fumagalli, although he adds that Colnago has ‘decided not to share’ how it compares with the competition’s bikes. That is, it conforms to UCI rulings on tube ratios and fairings (those wishing to see what Colnago did prior to these rules should search Colnago C42 for a truly outrageous looking machine), and it has been designed using CFD and wind-tunnels. While the original Concept had some aerodynamic traits, and there have been others since thanks to the V1-r, it’s this new Concept ‘2.0’ that is arguably Colnago’s first true aero-road bike in the modern sense.