societa colnago

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societa colnago | colnago c40 | colnago c40hp | colnago c50hp | colnago dream |
colnago teams since 1968 | robert millar c40 review | colnago clx | colnago c50 2007 |
colnago arte 2008 | colnago eps | ernesto colnago interview 2008 |
colnago ace | colnago clx 2.0 | colnago super | colnago c59

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colnago cx-1

colnago cx-1

the colnago cx-1 was announced earlier in 2008 as the first of colnago's revolution, though how much of a revolution a bicycle can be with the same two wheels, bars and saddle as every other bicycle on the market, is open to conjecture. however, in terms of colnago, it definitely is/was a revolution: semi integrated headset, square section monocoque frame and perhaps quite opnely targeted at the colnago newbie, rather than traditionalists like myself. we still drool over the master x-light. so if colnago think it's a revolution - or at least their marketing department does - what does the real world think?

the cx-1 frame has only one round tube on it, and that's the enlarged head-tube containing colnago's proprietary semi-integrated headset, though unlike the previously tested eps, this one is one and an eighth inch top and bottom. apparently manufactured by fsa, it follows the same principal as the former - effectively the cartridge bearing cups have made their way inside an elongated head tube, instead of sitting externally. i'll not go into my well documented views on what i believe to be an industry marketing exercise. but it does work rather well.

the head-tube smoothly melts into the rest of the front triangle of colnago's monocoque frame, thereby allowing the very square 'tubes' that make up the rest of the main triangle, plenty of contact surface area to provide strength. i'm not a great fan of non-round tubing, purely on aesthetic grounds: it seems a trifle odd to look down at the top tube when pedalling and see a flat surface.

colnago cx-1

curves come back into play at the bottom bracket section, though the square philosophy continues even here. the bb smoothly integrates with the seat and massive down-tube, pretty much ensuring that there will be no untoward movement in any direction from this part of the frame. whether this is overkill is open to debate. so far as i know - i didn't remove it to find out - the bottom bracket is english threaded; part of colnago's move towards standardisation across the range, with the possible exception of the steel master. while the front section is fabricated entirely in the far east, the rear triangle is apparently joined in italy, its subtle convex curve enhancing the sloping of the top tube. colnago is nothing if not a mass of contradictions: having publicly stated several years ago that sloping was not a feature that would be seen on the clover-leafed bikes, the entire range, again with the exception of the master, has sloping as an option or as standard.

the rear triangle is carbon, apart from the dropouts (replaceable on the drive side) and eschews the leaf stays appearing on many of cambiago's recent output in favour of more box section profiling. it's a bit of a shame that colnago has moved in a more geometric fashion with tube profiling - i find this less pleasing to the eye than rounder stuff, though i may have softened somewhat during the test.

colnago cx-1 bottom bracket

the frames are returned to italy as bare carbon before painting in italy; the colour scheme of the test bike (red and white) reflected the geometric flavour of the frame - all triangles, and clean-cut lines. a bit basic by my tastes, but quite clever where the lettering shows the carbon underneath to great effect. a nice alternative to transfer lettering. as with all colnagos, the signor's surname appears probably more often than it really needs to: top tube, down tube, seat tube, chain stays and fork legs. ernesto's signature appears on the seatstays of the b-stay style rear triangle.

while many others are using the increased head tube diameter to conceal the gear cable guides, or even to rivet a couple of external guides, colnago have rather spoiled the party by rivetting a winged device to the flat underside of the down tube holding front and rear cable guides - practical but a might clumsy looking.

colnago cx-1 cable stops

the fork is all carbon, including the steerer, and features a substantial pair of legs, culminating yet again in those annoying dropout lips to prevent the great unwashed from disaster should they inadvertantly forget to close the q/r at time of fitting the front wheel. the nanny state wins again, though this time from across the pond where these lawyers' lips are apparently a legal requirement. while the benefits of the semi-integrated headset are another topic entirely, it doesn't smoothly blend the fork crown with the head tube; matters not one whit to me, but i have a notion that this is sort of why we ended up with integrated sets in the first place.

since the frame is of the sloping variety, sizing becomes an issue. my beloved colnago c40 hp is a 54cm traditional frame, with a 54cm top tube (well, it ought to be, but actually it's 55cm, i'm pleased to say). in order to achieve the same stance with a colnago sloping frame, it's necessary to knock 4cm off the catalogue dimension - in this test the frame was listed as 50cm, but strangely with an effective 53.8cm top tube. i don't really understand, but you get the general idea. the seatpost is a colnago badged carbon model, in the same diameter as that on the eps (31.6mm). strangely the carbon post on the eps had the familar, but very footery twin-bolt fixing, salved slightly by the existence of a knurled front bolt. sadly that on the cx-1 features the spanner adjustable version, similar to my c40 which is almost a blight on the landscape. the saddle was a white prologo nago which my bum liked.

colnago cx-1 plasma bars

apparently the fsa factory isn't that far from cambiago, so there is room for conjecture that a certain amount of italian collusion is going on here. the bars fitted were fsa plasma k-wing carbon, an all-in-one bar and stem combo, also in red and white: an almost perfect colour match to that of the frame, even coming close on the geometric graphics. there are pluses and minuses with a one piece bar and stem unit, which you could probably figure out for yourselves, but the most obvious minus is the lack of adjustability. in this case, the angle of the bars suited me just fine thank you very much, but if it turns out not to be your angle of attack, there's really nothing you can do about it. check before you buy.

i'm very pleased to see that a number of bar purveyors have relegated those terrible anatomic monstrosities of a few seasons ago, in favour of the shallow parabolic curve. while i still can't see what was wrong with the classic bend (now seemingly regaining favour), this is an acceptable half-way house. i still think that the curve away from the levers is too severe to allow comfortable prolonged access from the drops, and i fear for their effectiveness pertaining to the small of hand, but they verge on aesthetic plausibility and are perfectly comfortable in use. the shaped flat tops are quite excellent on lengthy climbs, if you fancy emulating robert millar, rather than marco pantani. they're tunnelled underneath to allow concealement of the cables - the flat shape precludes running the bar tape all the way to the middle, and the cables would flap about otherwise.

colnago cx-1 forks

fitted groupset was campagnolo's ten-speed record - 53/39 and 12-25 at the back; the same comment applies as to the eps - eleven speed would have been a nice option, but the small sprockets were not troubled too often during the test, so i'm not sure what an extra sprocket would have achieved. shortly after the cx-1 turned up, i replaced the stock record calipers with a red pair of trp r960 brakes (review elsewhere) which colour-matched the colnago just nicely.

wheels were an interesting pair of fsa rd400eu - radial spoking front and rear (non-drive) and two cross on the drive side rear. they're notable for the slotted large flange hubs (front and non-drive-side rear), and the fact that the nipples are hidden inside the 25mm deep rims. they're light and strong, though i fear the hidden spoke nipple bit could prove a might inconvenient if any adjustment is required in the middle of nowhere. i am completely surrounded by middle of nowhere. while those on the cx-1 were obviously with a campag freehub, they can also be acquired with shimano compatibility. fitted tyres were the rather fine vittoria revo kxs - thay of the double sided tread. to save any palaver, i left them on the herringbone side throughout the test.

the fun part

colnago cx-1

my normal time with most test machines is a two week period, give or take the odd day, during which i flog them across the best and worst that islay has to offer. the roads are easy to accommodate - weather can be unpredictably fine or atrocious. this period of testing makes a lot of sense, because test bikes go from pillar to post, experiencing often untoward lengths of time sitting in the back of trucks or in warehouses, all of which needs to be catered for in the world of bike testing. fortunately, this time round, the colnago cx-1 was on holiday on islay for a month; a bit of a stroke of luck in this case. you can doubtless empathise with the joy of removing a brand new and usually expensive bicycle from its bag or box, before going for the exploratory spin to check all is in place and working accordingly.

colnagos rarely disappoint, but the cx-1, tagged as the first of colnago's revolution, was what i can only describe as a slow-burn. it was, initially, just a very good bicycle: nothing special, not really lacking in any department, but not the revolution i had rather hoped for/expected. however, subsequent rides revealed hidden talents: for starters, this could quite possibly be the most stable bicycle in the whole world. i honestly think that you could pull the cx-1 to a complete stop, and you'd still have to work hard at falling over. after being a critic of the frame's slab sidedness, i am loathe to criticise further in case this is the very reason for such remarkable stability.

colnago cx-1

the lack of top tube length, relative to my c40, wasn't quite as noticeable as i'd expected, though the stem section of the plasma bars was also a bit on the short side - another centimetre and i'd have been a happier bunny. i didn't find the cockpit cramped, and at no time, including across those really, really crappy roads, was there a teeth chattering moment.

brian smith and david harmon will attest to my appalling descending abilities, but i have a notion they were lacking less aboard the red and white colnago. it may also be the fractionally shorter top tube that provides such benefit, along with a nippiness that threatened to make my c40 seem a bit noodly (a thought verging on blasphemy). agile is probably the word i'm searching for here. unsuprisingly, that h r giger bottom bracket moulding didn't budge an inch, even if i stuck it in the smallest sprocket i dared, switched to the outer ring and forced myself uphill at a rate that brought tears to my thighs.

sadly, most hard uphill riding resulted in a bit of rubbing from the fsa rear wheel - nothing that would have you putting them in an envelope and sending for a refund, but i can't help feeling that such movement in the rear wheel is as a result of the frame's rigidity - all that energy has to go somewhere. such stiffness, however, bore some resemblance to the much dearer eps - harshness was at the very bottom of the scale, and road buzz never really made its way past the top tube, despite the substantial head tube and seatpost. everytime this bicycle was removed from thewashingmachinepost bikeshed for yet another ride, i found more that i liked, and after four weeks and several hundred kilometres, it proved itself worthy of being heralded a revolution.

colnago cx-1

since wheels are a really important part of any bicycle, often contributing as much to the ride as the frame itself, i felt honour bound to swap out the fsa pair for something that i knew the quality of. in this case, my trusty pair of mavic r-sys. i am of the opinion that the r-sys are very comfortable wheels, despite the contrary being posited by a prominent uk magazine in their long term test of the same wheels. if proof were really needed that the colnago frame was doing its job, and doing it rather well, changing the wheels was definitely the way to do it. there was almost no perceptible difference except when climbing: the mavics exhibited none of the rear wheel rub shown by the fsa pair, though considering the latter are almost half the price of the former... so the majority of progressively enjoyable ride quality, would seem to be coming from colnago's engineering. as indeed it should be.

sir isaac newton expounded in his third law of motion, that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, but colnago have found a way round that: the more you put into this frame, the more you get back, but seemingly more than you put in. that's honestly the way that it feels, and i'm not bullshitting in order to make for a more colourful review. if i'd only had the cx-1 for the more normal two weeks, you would not have been reading such an optimistic review - if you buy one of these, make sure that you ride it as often as possible in the first months of colnago cx-1 ownership, and watch the the grin on your face get closer to each ear as the weeks roll by. i really don't know how they've managed this, because it's different to any other colnago or bike i've ridden before: don't get me wrong, there are better colnagos at considerably higher prices, but there are none as intriguing as the cx-1.

and that's a very, very good thing in my opinion.

the colnago cx-1 frame and fork retails in the uk for £2,100 and is available in eight sizes - quite a range for a monocoque frame.. the fsa rd400eu wheels cost a palatable £350.

for a gallery of photographs, click here (flash plugin required).

many thanks to bunnahabhain for lending their distillery, and to rob and peter at colnago uk for letting me have the cx-1 for an extended period.

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societa colnago | colnago c40 | colnago c40hp | colnago c50hp | colnago dream |
colnago teams since 1968 | robert millar c40 review | colnago clx | colnago c50 2007 |
colnago arte 2008 | colnago eps | ernesto colnago interview 2008 |
colnago ace | colnago clx 2.0 | colnago super | colnago c59

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