This review was first published in Issue 76 of Cyclist magazine
It’s a little known fact, but Cinelli once made a BMX, the CMX.1. Launched in 1980, it may well be the only BMX in the world made from Columbus steel and featuring Campagnolo cranks.
It was also, admits Cinelli CEO Paolo Erzegovesi, more of a market reaction than a market driver – BMX had exploded in the US in the mid-1970s, and Europe was rushing to follow.
‘We did not sell many, really,’ says Erzegovesi, ‘but it was an interesting bike for the times, and it had some advanced features.’
Most notably it was TIG-welded, which was a new approach to joining tubes, and it featured a girder-style strengthening gusset at the back of the head tube. In a roundabout way, this little BMX would go on to help create one of cycling’s most iconic families of bicycles, the Cinelli Laser.
The Laser series has incorporated everything from steel aero bikes to ‘funny bikes’ with 24-inch front wheels, from time-trial to track and tandem to road racer. The bike featured here is the latest incarnation, the carbon fibre Laser Mia.
Truth behind aero
The original Laser was dreamt up by Cinelli owner Antonio Colombo, whose father Angelo founded Columbus tubing in 1919, and who bought Cinelli from Cino Cinelli in 1978.
‘I saw an early French aerodynamic bike on a trip to Japan, and it got me thinking. I wanted to make the most beautiful bike we could for the Milan show,’ recounts Colombo.
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That Laser debuted in 1981 and employed the cornerstones of the CMX.1. It was one of the first TIG-welded road bikes in the industry and had smoothed ‘aero’ gussets at crucial tube junctions.
However, in reality the frame’s shape had no tested aero credentials and, as Erzegovesi says, those gussets served a structural function, reinforcing the inch-diameter tubes and bladed seatstays.
The true aero nature of the Laser was in its customisation. With TIG welding, tubes could be joined at any angle to create the most aero rider position possible (unlike traditional frames, whose lugs predetermined the angles), and the gussets meant the acute tube intersections could be made strong and the frame stiff.
These themes are the cornerstones of the Laser Mia. It’s not an aero-road bike in the modern sense, but it is a fully custom frameset, albeit for an extra £900.
Both stock and custom bikes are made for Cinelli by a reputable Italian contract builder.
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This Laser Mia bears all the hallmarks of the originals, from the smoothed tube junctions to the bladed seatstays to the ‘fin’ under the bottom bracket, where the down tube extends beyond the BB shell like a mini upside-down spoiler.
It is also ‘Laser’ blue, and because of all this it has to be one of the prettiest bikes on the market.
Aesthetically driven
‘Classic’ is a very good word to describe this bike. It eschews most modern design cues.
The BB shell is threaded, the fork steerer is a parallel 1⅛th inch and the tubes are round and relatively skinny, although perhaps the most defining nod to provenance over function are the seatstays.
Given its slender looks, the Laser’s rear end is pretty firm, which I think is due to the shape and orientation of the seatstays, which are flattened in the vertical plane.
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That’s a nod to the Lasers of old, which tried to make the frontal area as narrow as possible, but flies in the face of modern comfort thinking, where the flattened aspect of seatstays, if there is one, is usually horizontal to better offer vertical flex (think bending a ruler across its width versus trying to bend it across its thickness).
There is a knock-on effect for rear-end pedalling stiffness. If you want a solid pedalling platform you want tubes to oppose sideways forces as much as possible.
Conversely, the Laser’s seatstays are predisposed to bend more under horizontal load and less under vertical load.
It will be no surprise, then, to learn this is not a particularly stiff frame. Everything is narrow when viewed from the front, which means the bike is apt to flex under big, bar-wrenching efforts.
It’s no noodle, but it’s some way off the stiffness benchmarks set by performance race bikes. Yet I would still choose the Laser Mia over many others.
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Feel is real
My ideal criterion for a bike is that it should feel not just good, but special in some way. It should have personality, especially at this price.
And the Laser has that by the lorry load. It’s not teeth-baringly aggressive or sublimely comfortable, but it is a pure joy to ride, and it’s fast.
First, the speed. I’m under no illusion that the main thrust comes from the Campagnolo Bora wheels. These aren’t the latest iteration, but even the older Boras are some of the fastest wheels out there.
They don’t carry higher speeds as well as a set of Enves or Zipps, but they accelerate like bullets and roll exceptionally smoothly.
The key elements? They’re 50mm deep but weigh just 1,435g (claimed), they are very stiff and they have ceramic bearings.
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They have all the pick-up I associate with a set of top tier Lightweights – themselves not technically the fastest when judged by other brands – but are around half the price.
Second, the joy. It’s a fair cop, I’m in love with the Laser’s looks and that inescapably influences the joy I found in riding it. But I also love how it rides.
It might appear dainty but it feels robust enough to sling around, ride in the rain and thump over rutted surfaces.
It’s not that stiff, but it has a lively ping akin to a steel frame, and while this frameset isn’t custom, the stock geometry short wheelbase (980mm) and short chainstays (405mm) help to create a very nimble bike that twinkle-toes through corners and hops merrily up climbs.
The Laser Mia will not be for everyone. In its pursuit of the original Lasers, Cinelli has bestowed upon this bike some of the quirks and foibles of yesteryear.
But in blending such characteristics with modern materials and components, it has made something both lovable and wonderfully unique.
Cynics would call it a trophy bike, but I prefer to think of it as the very best of the Sunday Bests.
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Spec
| Frame | Giant Propel Advanced SL 0 Disc |
| Groupset | Shimano Dura-Ace 9170 Di2 with Shimano Dura-Ace 9070 Di2 R610 Sprinter Switch |
| Brakes | Shimano Dura-Ace 9170 Di2 |
| Chainset | Shimano Dura-Ace 9170 Di2 |
| Cassette | Shimano Dura-Ace 9170 Di2 |
| Bars | Giant Contact SLR Aero |
| Stem | Giant Contact SLR Aero |
| Seatpost | Giant Advanced SL-Grade Composite Integrated |
| Saddle | Giant Contact SLR |
| Wheels | Giant SLR 0 Aero Disc WheelSystem, Giant Gavia Race 0 Tubeless 25mm tyres |
| Weight | 7.42kg (56cm) |
| Contact | giant-bicycles.com |
First look: Cinelli Laser Mia
20 February 2018
Price: From £4,700 frameset (£5,600 custom geometry)
The list of Cinelli’s contributions to cycling is long. Founded in 1944 by ex-racer Cino Cinelli, the Italian company lays claim to designing the first sloping fork crown, which made for stiffer forks than traditional horizontal crowns.
It also gave us the first injection-moulded base saddle, the Unicantor, designed to do away with saggy all-leather numbers, and the Binda toe strap, named after Alfredo Binda and featuring the self-cinching buckle that’s been ubiquitous ever since.
Then there were the first aluminium bars and stems to be widely accepted at pro level; Cork Ribbon bar tape for better comfort; the famously advantageous then famously banned Spinaci clip-on aerobars; the first commercially successful one-piece road bar and stem, the Ram; and arguably the first successful aero-road bike, the Laser. Well, not quite this Laser.
‘We released the first Laser in 1981, and while we cannot say for sure it was the first aero road bike, it was for sure one of the first,’ says Cinelli CEO Paolo Erzegovesi.
‘I joined in 1983 as an engineer, and over time we made all kinds of Lasers: road, track, time-trial, stayer frames. But the philosophy was always the same: to minimise drag.
‘It has always been an ongoing project, a work in progress, which is why any time we have the opportunity to experiment with new solutions, we try to apply them to the Laser. This is the result for the modern age, the same concept but in carbon fibre: the Laser Mia.’
Structural engineering
Between 1981 and 1991, Cinelli reckons that just 300 Lasers were made, with around 100 built for pros, accumulating 28 gold medals at Olympic Games and World Championships in the process.
Key to that success was the bike’s wind-cheating ability, both in design and fit, so it’s no surprise that this edition is a tube-to-tube frame hand-built in Italy, meaning it can be made in both stock and custom geometry. Yet although it’s now carbon fibre instead of steel, the Laser Mia hasn’t lost the iconic hallmarks of its forebears.
‘The original concept was about maintaining the freedom of geometry of the frame using straight tubes joined in a way to optimise the distribution of stress. The placement and shape of the “webbing” between the tubes is therefore crucial,’ says Erzegovesi.
‘We keep the same concept here, obviously changing the distribution of the material to suit carbon.’
The Laser Mia features substantial gussets behind the head tube and around the bottom bracket – including the trademark ‘fin’, which protrudes from the underside of the BB shell like a mini inverted spoiler – yet sticks resolutely to a 1 ⅛in head tube, threaded BB and decidedly narrow tubes.
It has shed over a kilo from previous incarnations, with frames coming in around 980g, says Cinelli, and just in case you ever questioned its historical provenance, the inside of the non-driveside chainstay is signed by Andrea Pesenti, the man who allegedly built every single one of those original 300 steel Lasers, and who even has ‘Laserman’ tattooed on the inside of his forearm. Crucially, it’s also only available in the trademark ‘Laser blue’.
By modern standards, the Laser Mia isn’t really an aero bike, but it’s still beautiful, and as Erzegovesi explains with some misty-eyed humour, can at least point to a history of aero testing.
‘We made a lot of funny tests on the bikes in those days, in homemade wooden wind-tunnels with coloured smoke and flying ribbons, and other more serious tests with the Italian National Team in Rome.
‘We would pull four riders at the same time [to emulate the team pursuit] using a long steel cable connected to a car, with an inline gauge that could measure the force needed to pull the train of riders at a certain speed. We could then use this data to see what changes to frame shapes, components and rider positions did to aerodynamics.’
By contrast, Erzegovesi freely admits the Laser Mia has never come anywhere near a wind-tunnel. But what it does bring to the modern road bike party, he reckons, is a classical, round-tubed elegance and the Laser’s trademark ‘responsive ride’.
Will the performance live up to the looks and the billing? Check back in due course to find out.
From £4,700 frameset (£5,600 custom geometry) | chickencyclekit.co.uk
