Colnago C60
Colnago C60
When Colnago decided to replace the C59, the answer was obvious: make a C60. Following in a great tradition of fantastic bikes with less than inspiring names, the C60 is the weapon of choice for Team Europcar along the V1-r (which we’ll come on to) and you’ll frequently see the bike being thrown from side to side beneath plucky French housewives favourite and gurn-king Thomas Voeckler.
Despite featuring top-of-the-line modern technology, the C60 is a bit of a throwback with its lugged design sure to appeal to anyone who lusts after the a bit of old-school steel. Of course, the C60 doesn’t contain any steel at all, but rather high-modulus carbon fibre designed to maximise strength and stiffness of the design.
Another unique feature from Colnago is the tube shapes. Colnago call them ‘star-shaped’ and while the reality is probably a little closer to octagonal, the point is that they’re not round. It’s something that Colnago have used for an awfully long time, and a throwback to the days of their classic steel ‘Master’ bike. The Italian firm are nothing if not completely in tune with, and aware of, their history and tradition, and determined to keep doing things their own way. The thinking behind those star-shaped tubes is that the profile allows for better control of the tube wall thickness which manifests itself through the ride as greater strength and comfort.
The tube profiles have been considerably beefed up form the C59 as well. The downtube is noticeably thicker, and the asymmetric seattube starts with a round profile near the toptube junction and turns to star-shaped when it reaches the hugely oversized bottom bracket lug.
Of course, the lugged design has brought the frame weight up a little (a claimed 1,050g) which means you won’t be building a super light bike compared to the likes of the Trek Emonda, Cannondale SuperSix EVO Hi-Mod et al, but the C60 is meant to be an all-rounder with a big emphasis placed on stiffness and ride quality, with lightness as the remit of Colnago’s other top-flight bike, the V1-r.
Like a lot of bikes right at the top end of the market, the C60 is available as a frameset only, unless you find one at a boutique bike shop. The bad news is that the frame only price is £3,499.95, and that’s for either the dual-routed (mechanical and electronic-compatible) version or the electronic-only option. It comes in a variety of colours, which is nice, and if you’re still feeling like you have extra money to burn there are limited edition framesets available like some of those we saw at Eurobike and featured in the gallery below.
The other important thing about the C60 is that there’s a disc-ready version available if you want to fully embrace all the new road technology around. Colnago were actually on the disc brake bandwagon comparatively quickly, bringing out a C59 Disc years before most other brands had even considered it, and the C60 Disc is far from an afterthought.