From what I heard the reason for the quick succession from the initial Oltre to the XR2 was that they all had issues with cracking; some aeras of the first Oltre were too thin so it wasn't stiff enough and then XR had a design flaw that led to heaps of warranties for cracks developing around the seat stays. I think it was only 3 years between the XR2 in 2014 and the XR4 in 2017.silvalis wrote: ↑Sun Sep 08, 2019 3:23 amHmm true. It was a bit of an odd schedule. The xr2 replaced the xr within a year or two. 4 year gap to xr4zappafile123 wrote: ↑Sun Sep 08, 2019 12:20 amOltre, XR, XR2, XR4 all came out within the space of about 8 years man (2010-2017) - thats a 2 year life cycle. The Infinito CV did have a very long life span becuase it was their best selling bike and there wasn't market pressure to update it (due to no one trumping the CV thing... according to Bianchi).silvalis wrote: ↑Sat Sep 07, 2019 10:08 pmThe xr4 is about half way through it’s lifespan. Bianchi works on a 5-6 year cycle. Expect the next one some time 2021 or 22zappafile123 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 30, 2019 2:29 amThe XR4 *is* old now and is about to be superceded. Personally I would freakin hate having dropped $$$ only for my new rig to be 'obsolete'.
You could be right, but I reckon there's going to be a 2021 bike released next year.
Wonder why...
But if you think about it, what can they do next? The incorporation of CV was a logical step from XR2-4. They put it through the wind tunnel, they made a disc version. Seems like they'd just need to start again, albeit going further down the aero line of things. Last I heard the Specialissima will stay in production for a long time so it makes sense to make a hyper-aero bike... whatever that is...
The only real problem with the XR4, if you can call it that, is snappiness or liveliness. But I think thats just how conterveil rides - its a dense, heavy material designed to suck up energy. Other than that the XR4 ticks all the boxes - it handles well, is stiff, super comfortable and respectably light. Its probably not realisitic to make it much lighter than it is.