Colnago’s C68 Gravel Will Satisfy Its Audience
Today Colnago launched its C68 gravel, completing its C68 trifecta: The C68 is now available as Road, Allroad and Gravel. Here is how Colnago characterizes its C68 gravel: “Whether your journey unfolds the White Roads of Tuscany rather than the wildest gravel roads, this gravel machine is your steadfast companion.”
Wildest gravel roads? Maybe. I’ve ridden the White Roads of Tuscany (Strada Bianche in Italian) and yes, this new C68 is ideal for those roads. But a week and a half ago I was in North San Diego County, riding the C68 Gravel with a number of my media contemporaries over a 40-mile course that appeared to me designed to show how nasty gradients and conditions can be while successfully aboard this bike. Most of my media friends fared better than I did, I must say, but I did it with only one crash.
The bike I rode was outfitted with a SRAM XPLR 10-44 groupset and while I love (and ride on my own gravel bike) SRAM 1x I find the XPLR undergeared when I’m grunting up 20+ percent grades, as we did several times in our ride just referenced. Which is to say, the C68 Gravel is absolutely the right bike for you. Depending on what you call gravel. And isn’t that the nature of gravel? Gravel is what it means to you. If I lived in Michigan I would be all about this bike. It just depends on – again – what gravel is in your neighborhood because gravel is not like pavement. It can be anything between pavement and full MTB, pavement and full MTB inclusive.
The C68 Gravel is Italian through and through. Kiton suits. Ferragamo shoes. U-Boat watches. A Ferrari, baby! This bike fits right in there and visiting this launch I attended was Jay Wolff, owner of Helens Cycles in Santa Monica. “Order deep!” I told Jay, because his clientele will be all over this bike.
But even this bike is right up against a hard utility limit, with tire clearance that maxes at 42mm. (The fork, pic above, is not the limiter; rather it’s the chainstay, pic below.) I find Colnago’s clearance decisions curious. It’s C68 Allroad, new as of mid-last year, maxes out at 35mm. The new road bikes I ride these days tend to have a clearance in that range, almost rendering moot Cervelo’s Caledonia, which Colnago’s C68 Allroad mimicked. I say “almost” because the Cal and Cal5 did hit a kind of Classics sweet spot (Cervelo’s answer to its much-wanted but commercially unavailable R3 Mud a decade ago). Thing is, Colnago’s version of that Allroad bike seemed to me the very thing for the Strada Bianche. If you then decide to make a gravel bike why not let me put some fatties on there if I want to?
Conversely, I get the decision not to add clearance because if you want to make a bike that handles just so you have to keep the tire radius (distance from wheel axle to the ground) within a range. Otherwise anything really good about the bike that makes it a Colnago, and makes it ride like one, is lost. So, 42mm it is. Or thinner.
Colnago says this bike “comes with a shorter reach and higher stack than the C68 Road, offering an optimal handling and setting, perfectly poised for challenging landscapes, while maintaining an overall aggressive setting.” Shorter reach and higher stack? Not by much. The C68 Road is a road race bike in a typical road race geometry. In size 530 has a stack/reach of 575mm/395mm. The C68 Gravel in size 540 has a stack/reach of 580mm/397mm. It's that way throughout the size run. It’s truer to say these bikes are close in geometric theme to the C68 road. But this is fine. If you talk to the designer of this bike – which I did – he rides his gravel bike the same way I ride mine: with the hoods on the bike about a centimeter tighter than on my road bike. So, if the gravel bike is made in a road geometry, how does that work? You put a stem on the bike about a centimeter shorter than would go on your road bike. Cervelo does the same thing with its Aspero, also a longish bike compared to other gravel bikes in the market. Both these brands are trying to get a little bit of MTB thinking into how they make these bikes.
What do I like about the C68 Gravel? It rides beautifully. It accomplishes everything its designer intended for it. It lives up to Colnago’s C designation, which stands for Carbon or Class or a mixture of both. It doesn’t excel in any particular metric – weight for example – but just as a Ferrari might not match the horsepower of a Battista, it’s the overall that matters. One more thing about the geometry before I leave this. I would ride both the C68 Road and the C68 Gravel in a size 510. They are not that different in fit metrics (e.g., stack and reach). The big difference is in front center. The Road version in this size has an FC of 605mm and the Gravel 632mm. The biggest reason is the super shallow head angle (72.5° in the road compared to 70.5° in the Gravel). But the Gravel rides like a road bike on the road. Why? I suspect – I didn’t ask and don’t know – that the fork offset is also quite a bit greater in the Gravel version, and the bike’s trail remains not that different from the Road’s trail. Whatever it is Davide Fumagalli, head of Research and Development at Colnago, got it right.
I don’t like the CC.01 Wide in theory, but I do like it in practice. And it’s the practice that counts. This is the one-piece front end Colnago makes. I don’t like any bar that doesn’t give me all me the freedom to fit the bike to suit. But I like this bar on this bike. It’s available in 80mm to 120mm lengths, in 10mm steps (part of why this bar works) and the virtual stem angle is -8°. You don’t replace spacers atop the bar on the steerer. You cut the steerer to length. Measure twice, cut once. No time for regrets. The bar is 40mm at the hoods, 46mm at the drops, and is a short and shallow, at 72mm/120mm reach and drop respectively. That’s the rest of why this bar works. It’s just what I like. It’s like a lot like the flared road and gravel bars I prefer (like the ENVE AR and the 3T Superghiaia).
Let’s talk about price for a moment and I’m going to go of the res if you don’t mind. (You won’t mind; some others will.)
The SRAM RED version of this bike, even for a Colnago, is pretty dear in price at $13,200. The Force AXS XPLR is plenty fine and that bike is priced at $9,600 which is still a truckload, nevertheless not wholly unpalatable if you’re in that earnings range. The problem is the wheels. This bike deserves more than a pair of Fulcrum Rapid Red 500. It deserves, well, the Zipp 303 S wheelset on the more expensive build. And wheels are important in gravel. So, I would starting flipping hundreds (important you bring cash) on the counter, all the while saying you’ll be taking the Force AXS XPLR build with the Zipp wheels. And the ability to change that CC.01 Wide handlebar for one in a different virtual stem length if need be, at no additional service cost. (Don't go cheaper; this bike also deserves electronic shifting.)
As your bike shop salesman says “no” to your offer you just keep laying those Benjamins on the counter, one on top of the next. By my reckoning that’s 90 seconds of Benjamins doing your talking for you.
Here's more on the Colnago C68 Gravel.
