Rideable Art - a web magazine about road bikes, mountain bikes and triathlon bikes

Apologies for the lack of recent updates. RideableArt will be returning soon…

At a time when most bike manufacturers seem to be heading for the wind tunnel, it was a pleasant surprise to spot the fixed-wheel Classico Pista in Condor Cycles’ 2006 catalogue.

Suave rather than svelte, with lugs and chrome aplenty, and a ‘cafe with latte contrast’ paint job, we think it’s gorgeous.
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Apologies for the infrequency in updating RA - it’s been a busy few weeks. Anyway, we’re back with a bang - a sneak preview of Bob Parlee’s Z3 SL, resplendent in stealthy, logo-free raw carbon, sporting a set of Obermayer Lightweight wheels and none other than the THM-Carbones Scapula SP forks we wrote about late last year.

If you (as we are) are speccing up a new bike for the summer, I can’t think of many more bikes deserving of the top spot (or at least top three) in any roadie’s shortlist.
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Kicking off 2006 with something from leftfield (and 1972, in fact) we bring you Nazarin Hamid’s stunning Colnago Super Track Fixie. Chock-full of period details, including full Campagnolo Record Pista (with a very cool aero seatpost) and Cinelli cockpit up front, the Eggbeater pedals are the only thing that give it away. This beautiful bike may well prove the inspiration for that ‘around town’ bike we’ve been promising to build ourselves for so long. Time to scour eBay again…
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Brit framebuilding gurus Omega are getting lots of good press at the moment for their gorgeous titanium frames. ‘You would be hard pushed to find a better bike anywhere‘ said Sean Yates of Omega’s Alchemy. And you’d be hard pushed to find higher praise than a vote of confidence than from Sean Yates himself.

The Nucleus, however, is made of something that doesn’t seem to be in vogue right now. Steel. It’s not just any old cro-mo, however - Omega have years of experience in working with steel, and it shows. The beautifully fillet brazed frame uses ultra-light Columbus Niobium tubing and a retro paint job sets the whole thing off to a tee. Whoever built this one up had impeccable taste as well: Dierl & Obermayer Lightweight wheels, Campagnolo Record and Zero Gravity brakes. Yum.
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From stealth to soul. After BMC’s Time Machine, the ultimate hi-tech TT speed machine, we bring you a hand-built, 29″ wheeled, single-speed mountain bike from a one-man-band bike builder in St Paul, Minnesota.

I forget where we first spotted Bob Brown’s website, but it was love at first site when we found this hard-tailed beauty in the gallery section. With its old-school skinny tube diameters, the beautiful detailing around the head and seat tube lugs, and its worn-in Flite saddle, this is a bike we could always find room in our collection for. Gorgeous.
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Developed by Swiss carbon fibre specialists Birkenstock for Tyler Hamilton to ride in the 2004 Tour de France (and indeed on to Olympic gold the same year) we never expected to see BMC’s stunning Time Machine make it to the shelves of your local bike shop. The good news is that it has, and in a form that is practically unchanged from Tyler’s groundbreaking TT bike. Cervelo raised the bar by a huge degree with it’s carbon P3, but BMC have gone several steps further. First up, the TT 01 offers custom frame geometry, something that until now (unless your name’s Tyler Hamilton) has been unavailable to the hoi polloi. The attention to detail is amazing; the UCI states that ProTour TT bikes should have a minimum frame tube width of 25mm, so the Time Machine’s are exactly 25mm. It has carbon dropouts, an integrated carbon fibre seatpost and the coolest integrated fork/stem arrangement (in carbon, would you believe) we’ve ever seen.

The bad news? The TT 01 costs a cool $12,500 for the frameset alone.
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Reynolds call their Ouzo Pro Lite ‘the ultimate climbing fork‘. After taking a look at THM-Carbones’ Scapula SP, we’re not so sure. In their pared-down, ‘tuned’ form, the Scapula SPs weigh an incredible 135 grams less than the lightest Ouzos, yet this art is very much rideable; the Scapula SPs have a rider weight limit of a beefy 85kg (187lbs).
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So, let’s see. You’d like a titanium frame that Cycling Plus rated 9/10, likening it to Litespeed’s gorgeous Vortex (circa £2,000). But you’d like something a little more exclusive than a Litespeed. And what’s this? You want custom geometry as well? And you want to pay a third of what you’d shell out for the Litespeed? You’d better speak to Setavento.
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One of our favourite bike manufacturers (not least because there’s one in the Rideable Art stable), Litespeed have once again raised the bar. Just when it seemed carbon fibre was the frame material du jour (with Merlin, Cannondale, De Rosa and others all experimenting with it) Litespeed have stayed faithful to the original wonder material, titanium.

And they’ve only gone and produced a stock, off-the-peg road frame that weighs 770 grams (1.7lbs, medium size), with no rider weight limit. Not only is that 130g lighter than last year’s Ghisallo, but they’ve made it stiffer and more stable as well. Our verdict? Worth selling your granny for.
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