BMC has achieved a lot in its 22-year existence. Its trademark angular frame shapes and tube forms make its bikes highly recognisable and they’ve been ridden to victory in the Tour de France, road and time-trial World Championships, as well as mountain bike races and Ironman triathlons too.
From its hi-tech, robotised Impec lab in Grenchen, Switzerland, BMC has pushed the boundaries of weight, aerodynamics and comfort. Like every brand, it has until recently seen these as separate categories, so it has the light, stiff Teammachine for racing, the aero Timemachine for speed and the Granfondo for long days in the saddle. But what if you had to pick just one BMC?
‘The engineers, faced with this question, for sure could not decide,’ says BMC’s road product manager, Mart Otten. ‘But not many of them said, “I’ll take the Granfondo,” which led us to think that we needed to change the image of the endurance bikes a bit.
‘We wanted to get away from the image of a very upright bike, and to improve pedalling performance, bringing it closer to the Teammachine, but keep the characteristics required for an endurance bike, like stability and comfort. We needed to make something lighter, more efficient and better looking, while keeping the fit dimensions to suit a wide range of riding styles.’
Enter the Roadmachine, a bike BMC claims excels in an all-round capacity as ‘a one-bike collection’.
Joining the Joneses
Look back at recent history and you’ll see the hunt for something with versatility beyond your common-or-garden road bike is where big names such as Specialized, Trek and Canyon are investing heavily. Now we can add BMC to the list.
This, the Roadmachine 01, is the top model (from a range of three) and is constructed from BMC’s premium-level carbon. A sleek-looking machine it is too, with system integration at the heart of its design, along with disc brakes and room for 30mm tyres.
Its clean looks begin at the cockpit, with a fork and stem combo that allows all the Di2 cabling and hydraulic brake hoses to be tucked away out of sight. Wiring and brake hoses run inside a compartment under the stem, plus the fork steerer tube has flattened sides, allowing room for cabling to pass down inside the frame until it emerges next to its relevant component.
The custom stem design, which accepts a standard handlebar, blends seamlessly with a shaped headset cover (BMC calls it a cone) that’s both an aesthetic and functional part of the design.
BMC makes no specific aero claims for the Roadmachine, but this type of top cap integration has been widely used to achieve a slicker front end. So too the way the fork crown tessellates closely with the down tube and the rear wheel tucks neatly into the back of the seat tube.
As Otten says, ‘We were designing this bike from the ground up, so of course we have taken a few opportunities to gain some free speed. But we prefer to call it “sleek” rather than “aero”.’
Function follows form
Another important aspect of the ‘cone’ is that it comes in two heights to offer the rider a decent amount of variance in front end geometry.
‘With the lower stack height you can achieve a position millimetres away from the Teammachine. But with the taller cone installed, the front end can match the position of the Granfondo,’ Otten says. And happily, these adjustments can be achieved with no need for an ugly stack of spacers.
Splitting the difference between the Teammachine and Granfondo seems to be a common theme. In terms of bottom bracket stiffness and vertical compliance, BMC’s test figures suggest the frame leans more towards the Teammachine. At the fork the lateral stiffness is on par with the Teammachine, while fore/aft flex, Otten suggests, is the same as for the Granfondo.
‘But this data only tells half the story,’ he adds. ‘How a frame performs on the test bench is one thing, but the actual riding experience and comfort is much more towards the feel of the Granfondo, because we have the bigger tyres and the smaller-diameter D-Compliance seatpost that both add a lot to the experience on the road for the rider.’
The details of this 930g frame are as sharp as its looks. The flat mount disc brake callipers mate beautifully with the frame and fork, and will accept either 140mm or 160mm rotors. The thru-axles sit completely flush (thanks to removable DT-Swiss levers), and there’s a neat integrated chain catcher too. The complete package graced our office scales at 7.69kg (size 56cm) – very respectable indeed for a thru-axled, disc brake bike.
BMC has steered clear of even a single mention of the word ‘gravel’ in its description, instead referring to the Roadmachine as the culmination of learnt processes and technologies from its other ranges, all merged into something that promises to be aero and fast, lightweight and stiff, plus comfortable and capable on a wide range of terrains.
Read into that what you will, and to find out whether it’s indeed true check back very soon for a full review.