Cinelli Nemo Tig review

By the time you finish reading these next two sentences, 1,667 Big Macs will have been eaten, 77,160 hours of video will have been watched on Netflix (of which 23% will concern Kevin Spacey), 250 babies will have been born and 37 litres of blood will have been pumped around your body. There will also have been at least two award ceremonies entitled Bike of the Year 2016, and it’s a good bet that at one of them, the award for best paintjob will have been given to the Cinelli Nemo. 

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Image 2 of 8

Coming to the surface

Back in the late 90s Cinelli decided to have a crack at the mountain bike market and released the steel Capitano Nemo, named after Jules Verne’s inimitable antihero and Nautilus commander from 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. It was made from Columbus Nemo tubing, billed at the time as being ‘as light as titanium but as strong
as steel’ thanks to aggressively butted tubes.

Accompanying the Capitano Nemo – a bike so rare that by all accounts Cinelli didn’t even bother issuing serial numbers to frames – was the Nautilus, also made from Nemo tubing. It was TIG welded and comprised a telltale seat tube and binder bolt lug, which also, somewhat curiously, made it a brazed frame as well. TIG welding and brazing are at such polar opposites of the framebuilding spectrum that to put them together is like a duet between Lady Gaga and Lulu.

Neither bike still exists in Cinelli’s range, although the Nautilus has in part resurfaced in the form of the all-new Nemo TIG. But don’t be fooled, this is no nostalgic reissue – the Nemo is a steel-framed racer that means business. 

The wonderful thing about TIGgers

‘Cinelli and Columbus have been partners since Antonio Colombo, president and owner of Columbus, bought Cinelli from Cino Cinelli in 1979,’ says Fabrizio Aghito of Gruppo SRL, the company conglomerated out of both brands. ‘Columbus therefore made specific tube shapes for the Nemo, starting with the standard tubeset.’

What that means is while you might see the Nemo’s Columbus Spirit badge on other steel frames, you won’t see the same tubeset anywhere else. Columbus has taken a regular Spirit steel alloy tubeset and custom drawn it to Cinelli’s precise dimensions.

Like the tubes, the frame is made in Italy, although Cinelli now farms this work out to a ‘quality external subcontractor’. It’s therefore one of the few ‘big brand’ bikes to be made exclusively in Italy, and while purists might mutter about the frame’s manufacturing origins, there can be no question about the craftsmanship. The TIG welds (tungsten inert gas, created using an electric arc welder as opposed to a gas-burning brazing torch) are simply stunning, with joints almost as seamless as wrapped carbon. Those around the head tube look as if the little ‘fish scales’ indicative of TIG welding have been filed off, but Aghito says the welds’ smoothness is simply down to the ‘skill of the welder’. Indeed, around the bottom bracket, where acute angles call for more filler when welding, the fish scales are more prominent, and the seatstays have been fillet brazed to the Nemo-engraved lug. But no matter. The result, together with the metallic ‘purple haze’ paint, is worth the admission price alone.

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Image 6 of 8

The main attraction

I’d almost buy the Nemo purely on looks. The mostly round-tubed construction and understated graphics combined with a 44mm tapered head tube (no mean manufacturing feat in steel), BB86.5 bottom bracket, cowled rear dropouts and colour-matched Columbus Fel carbon fork create a bike that looks both traditional and modern. And if this colour is not quite for you, Cinelli has a full palette of five stock colours and 25 custom colours (a £250 charge applies) from which to choose. Cinelli will even colour match its Neos series finishing kit to a frame. However, pretty bikes are all very well, and for a while I felt that was ultimately all it was.

The Nemo is most widely available as a frameset only or in this build, with Campagnolo’s new Potenza groupset, Miche Altur 35mm deep alloy clinchers, Cinelli finishing kit, Selle Italia X1 Flow saddle and Vittoria Rubino Graphene tyres. This off-the-peg build left me wanting.

On the one hand, the Cinelli components and saddle proved that you don’t have to spend mega-bucks to get a comfortable perch (RRP £26) and serviceable bars (£29), stem (£25) and seatpost (£13). It highlighted the value of quality rubber too – Vittoria’s new Rubinos are excellent, the 25mm-specced width a welcome choice. But it also underlined that you get what you pay for when it comes to groupsets and wheels.

Out of the traps the Nemo felt sluggish. Once rolling, it cornered well enough and descended assuredly, but acceleration was met with resistance, and shifting – though crisp – was lacking Campagnolo’s masterstroke, the UltraShift, whereby the right thumb lever can go through up to five clicks in one sweep to dump the chain into a bigger gear like a race car. 

But once I adapted to the Potenza’s way of thinking and stopped bemoaning the lack of UltraShifting found in Chorus, Record or Super Record, the groupset faded into the background in being entirely dependable. It’s also aesthetically pleasing, sharing form with its older siblings (if not materials, which are alloy not carbon). However, I just couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that the Nemo had more to give. I decided a wheel change was needed, and then suddenly the bike lit up.

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Image 7 of 8

Finding Nemo

In the interests of fairness I stuck with the original tyres, tubes and cassette, but swapped the wheels to a pair of mid-section carbon hoops. A pre-installation weigh-in showed a 773g drop in overall weight, all saved at the wheels, and with that the Nemo was transformed.

The sluggishness vanished and was replaced by rapid turns of speed, highlighting just what a stiff frame the Nemo has. The Columbus fork was a beneficiary too, with steering now taughter and lighter, the slight spring in the steel frame helping the Nemo track racing lines expertly. Climbing, which was previously a chore, became that much more pleasurable, and the only exception to the list of improved grades was descending, which was slightly the worse off. Carbon just doesn’t brake as well as alloy, whether through excess heat build-up or rain.

In the Miche Altur’s defence they are £280 a pair of alloy wheels. The hubs are smooth, and previous experience with Miche tells me they’ll last well. The brake track is also evenly machined, so there’s no judder from heavy braking, and stopping in all weather conditions in excellent. Yet the fact remains that the Nemo deserves more, and when it received it this pretty bike became a truly mean machine – if one around £900 more expensive. In fact, make that £950 as switching to a carbon post also just took a slight edge of harshness out of the ride.

I’d stop short at recommending changing out other parts too – as I said those here all work perfectly well, and realistically the only major difference would be further weight reductions. But if you wanted a project build, and had the cash, just imagine the Nemo dripping in Record or Super Record and some colour-matched Cinelli finishing kit. I already am. It’s a frame that deserves it.