Most people who put a lot of spacers under their stem, don't care about having too many spacers under their stem. I think putting that major fit difference between the Domane and the Emonda makes a lot of sense. What I'm suprised about is that they didn't combine the Crockett CX bike with the Emonda, adding some tire clearance to the Emonda. Making it a race / CX/ race gravel bike, as the biggest differences are 1cm of seat tube length, 1cm of chainstay, and 1.5deg of headtube angle (probably the biggest differnce).Knightyboy27 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 14, 2022 11:32 amThat's what the Domane ALR is for.
This has the same race geometry as the carbon Emonda, and will likely be marketed much more towards crit racers/people who aren't bothered about carbon/want to have an aluminium bike (e.g. for travelling)
They also need to cover a pricepoint for 'performance' bikes. Adding more of a fit arguement for the Emonda will build some enthusism from reviews to support buying an AL frame at this price point - especiallhy if they are reading an article from 2-3 years ago. Currently, they have 105 CF bikes at $3300, which used to be about $2k in 2021. That's a big gap to go from a $1600 Tiagra AL bike to an atractive 'performance' level. Being a bigger vendor, Trek can service the highend AL pricepoint market way better than the small and medium size brands because of the economies of scale needed for AL bikes. It makes a lot of sense to widen the gap between the Domane AL, which will be a slighly lower (~$200) pricepoint and already has the Checkpoint right there.
I'm suprised they left tire clearance at 28c. I'm not sure if this was for weight, to differentiate it from the Domane, factory tooling, or to allow for some smaller frame sizes. I'm guessing the later.