Colnago

CX Zero Evo Dura-Ace Complete Bike-2015

In the final kilometers of a race, when you're gearing up to lay down your final bit of reserve power on the road, Colnago's CX Zero Evo Dura-Ace Complete Bike ensures that you won't be second guessing your equipment. You've trained for months to build up your power stores, and you're using a meter and heart rate monitor to measure those stores out over the course of an event, so you need that effort to be transmitted to the road as efficiently as possible. The CX Zero Evo's combination of unrivaled Colnago engineering and what may be the best mechanical groupset in the industry today eliminates virtually any inefficiencies in your machine, so you can ride assured that your only limitation is yourself.

As proof, we submit the fact that team Europcar has successfully field-tested the CX Zero Evo in the pro peloton, conquering conditions as varied as the cobblestones of the Hell of the North and the highest peaks in the Tour. While the industry's current focus on precise specialization tries to convince us that a range of capabilities this wide is impossible, the CX Zero's paradoxical ability to make butter of unforgiving surfaces while still laying down efficient watts on long, grueling climbs proves otherwise. Not only that, but its long wheelbase, shorter reach, and slightly higher stack mean it rides comfortably for 20, 50, or 150 miles — a claim that aggressively slammed front ends like Colnago's C60 can't make.

The ride is smoothed by a few other features throughout the frame's geometry, such as the thinned and slightly flattened seatstays and the 27.2 millimeter seatpost, the latter of which provides a degree of compliance that integrated and oversized seatposts can only dream of. The use of different carbon moduli throughout the frame ensures that these forgiving qualities don't come at the cost of efficient power transfer, though. The bottom bracket, down tube, and head tube are all built up with higher moduli carbon that virtually eliminate lost watts due to torsional flex. The chainstays also feed into the bottom bracket with a generously oversized tube shape that further complements the frame's overall stiffness without sacrificing ride comfort.

There is a trend in the industry to build a bike piecemeal, incorporating off-brand and proprietary components where possible in order to keep production costs down. The CX Zero Evo Dura-Ace build definitely bucks this trend. The drivetrain is an all-Shimano affair, with the highlights being the Dura-Ace shift levers and crankset. The derailleurs are also Dura-Ace, and — since the whole kit was designed to work in unison — the CX Zero Evo's shifting may be the smoothest available in the world. The wheelset is another indication that this build is designed to be race-ready, even at the highest levels of competition. Shimano's ultra-light WH-900-C24-CL wheels may not have the most compelling name, but they are very propelling, as in they helped propel Team Sky to spots one and two at the 2012 Tour.