And the Carrera Phibra is still fugly.

    Way over the top. Wonder what it would be like to be the pilot with Cancellara as the engine.

on my PC that blocks me viewing any site with sexy bikes for sale

They’re missing a trick there.

It looks so chunky and the seat post is custom and looks very funky. Competitive cyclist had a lot of funny pictures, here is the Koga one and they have a few sets on flickr, here

oddness—The Faggin (???) pseudo-stitched leather look, or what?

Coolness—the made in flanders badge on the Musseuw

As for retro steel (a couple of fancy lugs, though not where they count…flat top fork and all, with brooks saddles and metal toe-clips standard) if were not all made-in-China (and still expensive for a China-built bike) I might have had to pull out the credit card at the REI yesterday for one of the retro Raleighs. (Instead I patted the saddle for a while, smiled at it, bought my socks, and went home. )

I’d call the 2010 Record Ace (and even the Clubman) the “non-embarrassing end of retro.” Or maybe I’m just easy. For those who don’t mind the provenance, and would like a new steel frame bike that’s a lot like their 40 year old bike, I thought I’d mention it. I think the in store price was down to about $1,400 for the Ace, and around $900 for the Clubman (cheaper Brooks saddle). Both come in a lovely brown, closer to seal brown than chestnut, really about perfect for the retro look.

More Eurobike porn from CN.

With a belt drive instead of a chain. Who on Earth is that bike for? Who wants a single speed but demands the performance of a carbon frame?

That’s a little bold considered he was 8th in the KOM classification at the end.

about as much as I’d want a crunchy frog chockie. No matter how much you overengineer the thing (and I withold judgement on that), on the day the carbon fails—and all things must eventually fail—that sudden, clean, snap is not going to be a good feature.

yes. (NB, that link leads to a certain number of “oops, forgot the carport” breaks, which don’t really count, but also to some “I was riding and this happened” horror stories.)

If you mean, do we know how long the average lifetime is, or how to tell if it’s about to happen, I don’t know of a way. Only that it happens fast, as opposed to the relatively slow teeeeeeeaaaaaaarrrrr—cruuuuuunch of a steel tube. And that’s what freaks me out about carbon. Especially in high impact riding.

Velo News published an April Fools article about the “spontaneous combustion” occuring with non-ferrous frames when they were ridden over bodies of water. Many readers were fooled and freaked out.I still think of it when riding carbon.

Have you seen this site?