It wasn’t long ago that a dream road bike started life as a frame in your hands.
You would then pick the parts – wheels, groupset, bars, seatpost, saddle – that best suited your preferences and wallet.
While this is still entirely possible today, at the top end of the market it’s a lot trickier, as brands design their own components to function with the frame.
Take the latest Trek Madone – it will only work with the supplied cockpit, seatpost and brakes. All that’s really left to play with are the wheels and drivetrain.
Specialized’s Venge ViAS, Canyon’s Endurace and BMC’s Roadmachine are similar stories.
Walled garden
The result is that the consumer is required to stay within the manufacturer’s walled garden as the industry pursues its latest goal: system integration.
‘In the days before the Lugano charter [the UCI’s rulebook to curtail outlandish bike designs], crazy bikes were coming out. We started to realise there was such a lot to be gained, especially aerodynamically, from integration,’ says Mark Cote, head of integrated technologies at Specialized.
‘In 2005 we were just speccing Reynolds Ouzo Pro forks on a frame. You can’t imagine that now. Now practically every frame and fork is designed together. Now you ride a bike, not a frame.’
Ben Coates, global director for road at Trek, agrees: ‘If you look back 10 years, the most advanced bikes out there still used a whole bunch of products from the likes of Zipp or Hed or whoever.
‘It was all bolt-on accessories that were universally compatible,’ he says. ‘In that short period of time almost every major manufacturer has chipped away some of those gigantic restraints.
‘Whether it’s seatposts or brakes or cranks or having their own wheel brand, major manufacturers are chipping off the pieces one at a time.’
Integration, integration, integration…
It’s easy to assume the main reason for designing bikes with proprietary components is to ensure customers are obliged to spend all their money in one place, even when replacing parts, but the manufacturers assure us that this is not the case.
‘I see integration going in two clear directions,’ says Cote. ‘Where performance benefits are obvious, we will integrate.
‘Where there ends up being a rider detriment because of a lack of choices, we won’t. On an aerodynamic performance bike such as the Venge ViAS it makes perfect sense.
‘We couldn’t have achieved the result we did without using integrated components. But you still need bikes that can be completely personalisable, like the Tarmac.
‘We left it this way on purpose. A rider can customise everything from an anthropometric and geometry standpoint [bike fit] to the aesthetics.’
Compromises
According to Cote, if you want the best-performing bike there might be some compromises in terms of how much adjustment and personalisation is possible.
Coates agrees, saying, ‘For some, integration has a potentially negative connotation, but we’re looking at optimisation. Our goal is not to integrate for integration’s sake.
‘In fact we would rather not integrate. It’s harder for us, it’s harder for retailers, it’s harder for consumers. But the real gains that are coming in road bikes are coming from integration of the main parts.’
‘It’s not all about aerodynamics,’ adds Cote. ‘Aesthetics is also key, and system integration also makes a lot of sense for saving weight too.
‘Just switching out bolts from steel to titanium only saves so much weight, but if you can get rid of the need for that bolt or even the clamp entirely it saves so much more, so why not?
‘That said, from a system design standpoint, aero is the major benefit. If we saved 3% of a bike’s total weight but at a cost of losing all its adjustability, then OK, it might save you measurable time on a steep climb, but integrating for aero, as we did on the ViAS, showed that versus a standard road bike it will save you 116 seconds over 40km.
‘Aero is always on – you can’t turn that off unless you’re not moving.’
Drawing the line
‘Is there a limit to how far you can go with integration before consumers will feel negativity towards it? Yes,’ says Coates, ‘but the limit is not how much can you do, it’s how well can you do it.
‘Nobody is giving us a hard time for the Madone brakes because they work really well. If they sucked, there’s every reason for people to say, “Hey, I can only get this bike with these brakes, and I don’t want that.”
‘We’ve seen that happen where manufacturers have not executed integration to at least the level that standard parts operate on.
‘If our bar and stem work perfectly and it costs less money or makes the bike faster or looks cooler, or hopefully all of the above, then why is anybody going to say, “I don’t want that integrated bar and stem”?’
‘You can’t force anyone,’ says Cote. ‘Our hope is that the products we make lead to genuine benefits, not back people into a corner. If it feels like we’re holding riders hostage, we’ve failed.
‘Ultimately the rider decides. If a brand goes too far then a bike will simply not sell. So, although they don’t always know it, the consumer ultimately holds the power, not the manufacturer.’
Step by step
It’s true that a bike will only sell if people like it, so for the moment the big brands are feeling their way forward, adding integrated elements and gauging the response before moving on to the next concept. But where is it all heading?
‘Fast forward five years from now and I’m fairly confident that we can see the road bike industry moving in a new direction,’ says Cote. ‘Integration is the start of that shift.
‘Bikes are crazily adjustable right now – we have 12cm of reach adjustment through seven sizes of bike and stems, plus around 16cm of vertical stack adjustment.
‘As we start to understand two-wheeled vehicle dynamics a bit better, I think we can go towards bikes more intensely focused on handling.
‘There could be a situation where we see brands starting to develop parts based on optimal cockpit geometry, which may lead to a decreased range of adjustment, or more specifically a tighter range of fit.’
And what of the final pieces of the jigsaw? Will the big brands such as Trek and Specialized start producing components such as groupsets?
‘We always have to ask ourselves, can we create something better than what is already available?’ says Cote. ‘Can we make groupsets better than Shimano or Sram or Campagnolo? That’s a big ask! But hey, not impossible.’
Would Coates want Trek to have a crack at producing a groupset?
‘Today there are things about the drivetrain that hold back bicycle development, for sure, but there are other things still available – lower-hanging fruit– that can potentially make a bike better and more enjoyable to ride.
‘This is stuff that’s more cost-effective to develop. There’s an opportunity with every single product to be optimised to make it faster, lighter, more comfortable. At the point where the lowest-hanging fruit is the drivetrain, then it will get attacked. That’s human nature.’
The day could come when every part of a bike is produced under the same brand, with components that won’t work with any other brand.
That thought might fill you with excitement at the performance possibilities it could offer, but if it makes you feel nervous that personal choice will be thrown out the window, then you’re not the only one who thinks like that.
‘I really hope it doesn’t turn into a proprietary world,’ concludes Cote. ‘If I could look into my crystal ball right now, I would say that we will move more towards having more integration, but in a way that still leaves choice for aftermarket components.’
So don’t throw out that box of spare parts just yet.
Exhibit A
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Specialized Venge ViAS Disc
From £3,900, specialized.com
With its own wind-tunnel in its Californian headquarters, an already established working relationship with the McLaren Formula One team and a penchant for producing seriously fast bikes (such as its Shiv TT bike), Specialized was perfectly poised to pounce on performance gains through integration.
The Venge ViAS is the consummate example of system integration, thanks to Specialized having total control over virtually every component on the bike.
Only the derailleurs, shifters, disc brakes, chain and cassette are not made in-house.
The result is a bike that, Specialized claims, will be 116 seconds faster than a standard road bike over 40km.
That’s a saving not to be sniffed at, and depending on your tastes this is a seriously cool looking bike.
Exhibit B
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Trek MadoneFrom £3,600, trekbikes.com
Trek really made waves when it launched its latest Madone 9 Series, with its engineers displaying some unconventional thinking for system integration.
Most obvious is the front brake, fitted neatly into the front fork such that it requires a pair of hinged flaps at the front of the head tube (which Trek calls Vector Wings) to enable the bike to turn.
The upshot of such outlandish design is a seriously fast bike, which Trek says it couldn’t have achieved without being able to take a more holistic approach, for example by producing more components such as its bar/stem combo in-house to maximise the performance benefits.
Exhibit C
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Look 795 AerolightFrom £6,210, zyrofisher.co.uk
Look was an early pioneer of system integration.
A decade ago it created its own hollow carbon crankset and integrated bottom bracket system, plus its E-Post seat mast on its 595 model.
More recently, in 2014, its 795 Aerolight took integration to a whole new level. With fully integrated brakes, a proprietary stem plus the ZED cranks and integrated E-post, Look claimed it was the world’s most aerodynamic road bike.
Its appearance was divisive, though – the market simply wasn’t accustomed to such unorthodox designs.
