"Lightness" vs "Aeroness" UPDATED 10/2023

[eflo]

They have a lot of ways to make certain bikes look good, e.g. arbitrary price limits and making up categories like 'best shop bike' and 'most comfortable bike'.
I'm sure the bikes shown in the picture is also a coincidence.

[tjvirden]

They have a lot of ways to make certain bikes look good, e.g. arbitrary price limits and making up categories like 'best shop bike' and 'most comfortable bike'.
I'm sure the bikes shown in the picture is also a coincidence.


tour.jpg

This.
A test and its results may well be factually correct.......but what does that actually mean? The great "advantage" of testing things that are very difficult to measure (quantify) is that you can design your test to reach a specific conclusion, and it's really hard for someone else to refute it.

[FlatlandClimber]

At least GCN openly states that they are sponsored in these videos... also, I don't remember them comparing bikes of several brands and stating "this one is better than that one."
Road Bike, Tour Mag and several others clearly state which bike is best and which ones are worse. That's where the difference lies for me.
And some of these test just felt off:
(https://www.roadbike.de/rennrad/die-sch ... t-im-test/).
Having ridden the 2017 Aeroad and the 2019 Madone SLR, it's really hard to believe anyone would claim that they are "equal in comfort".
But let's not derail this thread further...

[rides4beer]

Interesting data point for weight vs aero when talking total system weight/aero and not just the bike. Did a 65 mile ride yesterday, having just recently gotten my first power meter, I was comparing numbers with a friend of mine. He's about 40lbs lighter than me, so we expected my numbers to be much higher, we actually ended up with the same average and normalized power. His bike is older, kind of a blocky style frame, 42cm bars, no aero optimization, shallow wheels. Mine is a 2021 SuperSix Evo with 38cm aero cockpit and 56mm wheels (We are similar height and shoulder width, so frontal area is prob similar, except for my narrower cockpit). Stock the SSE was rated at 219w by Tour, so with the narrow cockpit and deep wheels, it's prob not too far off the faster bikes on the list.

Obviously, if he was on the same bike, his power numbers would have been lower, but it was interesting to see the difference aero can make.

[RDY]

Okay, I thought they were Taiwanese...
I don't want to accuse anyone of collusion, because I could never prove it.
However, I have read loads and loads of German cycling magazines and I always found it a little suspicious that German bike makers, especially the one from Koblenz always perform through the roof. I have ridden Canyon bikes and I am not saying they are bad by any means.
Just saying that the ones with the biggest ad space also perform well in the Tests... just a Little sour taste in my mouth.

The same also goes for German car mags ...

Merida are Taiwanese, and they also hold a majority stake in Specialized. They have a design centre in Germany though, where they do a lot of the concept and aero stuff for their high end bikes. Think they opened it about 15 years ago.

Two largest bike manufacturers are both Taiwanese. Giant & Merida.

[openwheelracing]

To be fair, publications all over the World rank German cars highly, as they should.

Canyon and Rose are great bikes. Taiwan.also makes excellent high quality frames and parts.

[mikemelbrooks]

Interesting data point for weight vs aero when talking total system weight/aero and not just the bike. Did a 65 mile ride yesterday, having just recently gotten my first power meter, I was comparing numbers with a friend of mine. He's about 40lbs lighter than me, so we expected my numbers to be much higher, we actually ended up with the same average and normalized power. His bike is older, kind of a blocky style frame, 42cm bars, no aero optimization, shallow wheels. Mine is a 2021 SuperSix Evo with 38cm aero cockpit and 56mm wheels (We are similar height and shoulder width, so frontal area is prob similar, except for my narrower cockpit). Stock the SSE was rated at 219w by Tour, so with the narrow cockpit and deep wheels, it's prob not too far off the faster bikes on the list.

Obviously, if he was on the same bike, his power numbers would have been lower, but it was interesting to see the difference aero can make.

To be honest there are so many variables I am not surprised, for example, if it was a hilly route he might have used less power climbing, if it was so steep that you had to brake descending your extra weight wouldn't have helped. If he took longer pulls on the front, wore less aero clothes or held a less aero position. Or it could be one or both powermeters were not calibrated properly.

[Dr.Dos]

Merida are Taiwanese, and they also hold a majority stake in Specialized. They have a design centre in Germany though, where they do a lot of the concept and aero stuff for their high end bikes. Think they opened it about 15 years ago.

Two largest bike manufacturers are both Taiwanese. Giant & Merida.

Manufacturing takes place in Taiwan and China.

Design, development, marketing, PR - hell even their global website is made and hosted in Germany.

https://www.merida-bikes.com/en/p/imprint-170.html

Please stop talking nonsense.

[RDY]

Merida are Taiwanese, and they also hold a majority stake in Specialized. They have a design centre in Germany though, where they do a lot of the concept and aero stuff for their high end bikes. Think they opened it about 15 years ago.

Two largest bike manufacturers are both Taiwanese. Giant & Merida.

Manufacturing takes place in Taiwan and China.

Design, development, marketing, PR - hell even their global website is made and hosted in Germany.

https://www.merida-bikes.com/en/p/imprint-170.html

Please stop talking nonsense.

Cool story. But they're a Taiwanese owned, operated, incorporated, listed and founded company.

[usr]

Direct to customer brands rise and fall by designing precisely to whatever testing criteria magazines in their target market use to rate "performance", no matter how marginal differences actually are. Traditional brands benefit from that as well, no doubt, but they rise and fall by convincing their dealer networks to fill their showrooms, and "magazine performance" isn't a big factor there. "I bought brand X because that's what my dealer was selling" is dying (even if temporarily resurrected by pandemic scarcity), but it's still echoing, hard. The person who runs dealer relations surely outranks the person who runs engineering almost everywhere...

PS: clearly engineering will be outranked by marketing in direct-to-customer brands as well, but add a dealer network and its role will be even smaller.

[Dr.Dos]

Cool story. But they're a Taiwanese owned, operated, incorporated, listed and founded company.

Your cool story misses the context. This is because you do not understand the connections and who wknows who here in Germany, so you end up with unrelated babbling about a Taiwanese owned company. Sad but that's your life

[Dr.Dos]

duplicate

[Nickldn]

Cool story. But they're a Taiwanese owned, operated, incorporated, listed and founded company.

Your cool story misses the context. This is because you do not understand the connections and who wknows who here in Germany, so you end up with unrelated babbling about a Taiwanese owned company. Sad but that's your life

By virtue of that argument Merida is also American, because it owns 49% of Specialized. Oh wait that makes Specialized a Taiwanese, or no a German company? This way madness lies.....

[RDY]

Cool story. But they're a Taiwanese owned, operated, incorporated, listed and founded company.

Your cool story misses the context. This is because you do not understand the connections and who wknows who here in Germany, so you end up with unrelated babbling about a Taiwanese owned company. Sad but that's your life

Nationalism and client journalism & nepotism are not the same thing. The discussion was implying flag waving. Client journalism is appalling in the cycling press full stop. There's very little to distinguish most of the 'journalists' from their bestest buddies in the marketing departments of bike brands and distributors - they're basically just an extension. Cycling press is every bit as much a case study as the Tame Apple Press.

Yours is the inanity (and passive aggressiveness).

[Dr.Dos]

Look, you cannot read the TOUR mag without a translator, you have no idea about how the TOUR tests influenced the bicycle industry since the early nineties of the last century (tbd if this is a good thing or not). And you have not idea about German brand's, importer's and big retailer's relationships to TOUR (and bike) mag over the decades. So please, keep it shut and do not make a fool of yourself.

And putting 'journalists' in quotation marks with regard to TOUR writers is about the lamest things I had to read on WW since 2002 before I even created a user account here.