Until around three years ago, endurance bikes were considered the ‘soft’ option and bore no resemblance to most brands’ race bike designs.
Then along came BMC’s Roadmachine. It was as slick looking as the brand’s Teammachine race platform, its geometry wasn’t too far removed and it was nearly as aero.
It triggered a rethink in the industry and brands repositioned the key attributes of endurance bikes - as a result, today most brands’ endurance offerings mirror their race bike designs far more closely and endurance bikes are increasing.
While the original Roachmachine set the standard back then, bike development never fails to move forward apace so more recent releases from BMC’s competitors have trumped the features of the first design.
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According to Mart Otten, senior product manager at BMC, this coupled with a change in how cyclists ride was the stimulus to refresh the Roadmachine.
‘Road cyclists are riding further, longer, and to higher elevations than ever before. And, many endurance riders are travelling great distances to different regions and countries to participate in epic-size events which entail all-day adventures.
At the same time, those events get more extreme by navigating varying road styles and conditions, longer distances and often more climbing. We wanted to meet those demands with a new design.’
The new Roadmachine has all the hallmarks of an updated design: according to BMC it is lighter, stiffer, comfier and has wider tyre clearances.
The frame is put together using BMC’s ‘Tuned Compliance Concept’, whereby the carbon is laid up to promote compliance but not sacrifice pedalling efficiency. It is the new way of saying ‘laterally stiff, vertically compliant.’
BMC says thanks to the use of some ‘advanced computer modelling’ it has achieved a more effective scheduling of the carbon in the frame’s construction.
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Tube shapes have considerably changed in several places, the D-shaped seat post has been slimmed down and the seatstays have been dropped a further 10mm.
This all means bottom bracket stiffness has gone up by 5% and the torsional stiffness of the front end has been improved by 20%.
A new, asymmetric fork is 10% stiffer, yet total front end compliance is up by 25% over the previous generation bike. BMC says these improvements have all occurred in the context of a 25g drop in frame weight.
BMC’s ‘Integrated Cockpit System’ has been a successful inclusion on both its Teammachine and Timemachine Road designs so it has been carried forward on to the new Roadmachine as well.
‘ICS’ offers a variety of stem dimensions while maintaining integrated aero cable routing via cover underneath the stem.
BMC says the feature ‘allows stack and reach adjustability via a dedicated split spacer system for easy fit adjustment without stem removal and hydraulic hose disconnection.’
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While the versatility of the new Roadmachine stops short of the requirements necessary for proper gravel riding, BMC suggests the new bike is an ‘all-road’ machine, thanks to its capability to take tyres up to 33c.
‘We wanted to create an endurance bike that is not only good for riding all types of road surfaces, from smooth tarmac to rougher roads or cobbles, but also one that also shines when roads point uphill,’ says Otten.
Time will tell if these claims hold true as Cyclist is due to test the new design in the near future. Check back for our take on BMC’s Roadmachine soon.
