tessartype wrote:
Decent, but looking at the Spesh ViAS and upcoming Trek Madone, it's just not quite as extreme and therefore, well, less interesting - which probably generates less of a discussion. The launch wasn't anywhere near as dramatic as Specialized's launch, which was
all over the web.
It's probably a brilliant bike, just seems like a "Jack of all trades, master of none" type frame - aero, but not the most, with a hint of comfort and a nod to the weightweenie crowd so as not to offend them. I might snag one of the lower-rung models, depending on pricing compared to the S2, Propel and next Madone.
In general, I don't think there is a large appeal from the aeroness in aero road bikes. Think of the market for road bike? How many of those people actually race and care about saving some watts while sitting in the pack. Aeroness on TT bikes has a much larger market. Go to transition at any IM or Challenge event and there is $10M of aero equipment sitting in transition. I challenge you to find a single road race where there is that much volume of aero equipment on the starting line. I think features like aero placement of brakes which potentially sacrifice braking power (not always, but more than standard brake placement) results in negative feature if you are a road racer or riding grand fondos on technical terrain. My 2 cents on this market segment. If road racers really cared about aero bikes, then regular round (or near round tube) road bikes would cease to exist, because the aero bikes will always have better race performance for the same geometry (as many here say ride stiffness/harshness can be modified dramatically with tire/wheel/saddle selection).