Thursday morning bicycle porn!

"Anon" (tjsielsistneb)
02/27/2014 at 10:22 • Filed to: Bicycle Porn

Today we have a 2014 DeRosa Nuovo Classico in "Rosso" red. This beautiful Italian made handbuilt frame is matched with an equally as Italian Campagnolo Super Record groupset. With this bizarre set up the Nuovo Classico almost seems to come from an alternate reality that asks the question "What if we didn't stop racing on steel bikes?" and oh boy! does this bike answer that question!

The Nuovo Classico is the perfect marriage between the new high tech and traditional bicycle building techniques. The steel frame is hand built in Italy by master craftsmen, the likes of which may only be matched by those at Maranello! These works of art are then adorned by the very best that Campagnolo has to offer, a Campagnolo Super Record groupset. The groupset, extensively using carbon fibre and high strength aluminum, provides the best combination of shifting smoothness, power transfer, and lightweight available to date. Finally the entire package is topped off by a set of the famously almost indestructible and light Fulcrum racing 5 wheels. All of this adds up to a perfect bike to kick some carbon ass!

DISCUSSION (20)

Casper > Anon
02/27/2014 at 10:30

I don't understand wanting rare or special bicycles. To me what little perk I would get from the nicer parts would be more than offset by the conversations I would have to have with the weird bike aficionados while I was out and about.

Seriously, those guys are just plain weird. Even farther on down the line of crazy than MG guys.

puddler > Anon
02/27/2014 at 10:35

i want this.

Kinja'd!!!

but i don't want to pay $4k for a Ti frame.

maximillious > Casper
02/27/2014 at 10:35

Haha the crazies are SO MUCH FUN!!!! They get all hot an bothered by EVERY SINGLE THING!!!! That Rosa for example. If you had that bike and it didnt have Campy on it, holy shit storm. Its so dumb. Yesterday I posted a thread about my one of a kind build... I went with alot of japanese parts but through in some Phil Wood and i got SO MUCH SHIT for mixing. Rare bikes are fun and beautiful, like a rare car. You should see the freaks I have to talk to when I am driving the Cosworth Vega.

puddler > maximillious
02/27/2014 at 10:41

i would seem like a total freak if i saw a cosworth vega in a parking lot.

"can i touch it? pop the hood, rev it, let me crawl under it and look at it's dirty bits"...good way to spend a half hour.

maximillious > puddler
02/27/2014 at 10:49

Haha thats pretty much how it goes every time. Its kind of like the Delorean in Regular car reviews. Everyone wants to touch it, sit in it, see the engine, see the machined dash, feel the clutch, hows it shift blah blah blah. The one in my family was bought brand new by my father, it had an entire blueprint done on the engine 3 years ago and now makes 175 at wheel hp off of the stock engine (we removed some of those bits that hurt it so bad when it went into production and replaced some old shitty pieces with modern new better hotness) The thing sits with 60k miles and could be daily driven. Not a single leak, slip, shutter, or problem. Next on the list is having the rims redone in the original bronze paint and possibly redoing the paint work, although that can take away from its value.... It was the car I learned to drive stick on, and we will never ever ever get rid of it.

I am going to drop stuff off at my house tonight, Ill try and snap a few photos for you.

Anon > Casper
02/27/2014 at 10:50

A lot of it is about craftsmanship. It's why people are willing to spend more on a BMW 320i than a Toyota Camry. If you look at it technically they're almost the same in power. However tons of people buy the 320i because it has much better craftsmanship and handles much better. It's about the same with bikes.

Anon > puddler
02/27/2014 at 10:50

Fireflies are awesome, awesomely expensive, but awesome.

puddler > Anon
02/27/2014 at 10:58

damnit...everytime i go interwebs bike shopping i fall into a pit of depression...i don't want to have to rap to buy these!

i'll sell drugs though, what ya'll need oppo, i'll help with your habit, if you help with mine. lol, jk

Mattbob > Anon
02/27/2014 at 11:07

very pretty. I wish I liked road biking more. They look nicer than MTBs, but are nowhere near as fun in my opinion. I just restored a road bike at the beginning of winter, and I'm not entirely sure of how much I even want to ride it. It looks pretty, but I can't jump it.

Casper > Anon
02/27/2014 at 11:12

There's only so much you can do to a bike that isn't being raced. Cars are complex, many thousands of parts go into them even functioning... a bike is a bike. All you can do is change materials and build quality, the design only subtly changes and the performance changes are imperceptible except in racing. At that point is purely bragging rights for most riders, like Porsche or Ferrari owners that don't actually drive the cars to a point of feeling the difference, but love to sit back with a cup of coffee and point out all the points of fine craftsmanship on their $500,000 talking point.

I think this bike is the same thing. It's just a bragging piece more than an actual improvement in the performance you would get.... but it would attract a whole lot of crazy attention that I could completely live with out. It just seems weird to me to spend the extra money for unwanted attention.

Anon > Casper
02/27/2014 at 13:38

Now I believe that you are correct that many hi preformace bikes are bought by people just to show off! However on your comment of performance, what you're paying for on an exotic bike are 4 things;

1.Name

2.craftsmanship

weight

4.feel/stiffness .

Weight and feel being the most important part. To give you an Idea of how important weight can be here's an experiment GCN did:

(Now I haven't seen the video in forever so I'm working from memory here. However if you want to see it, it's called "light bike or light body" and it's a video they did with head squeeze.)

basically it showed that a psysically fit cyclist on a 20% incline at the same power output across the board lost 7 seconds per pound added to their bike over their original run. If you consider that a normal road bike starts around 22 pounds and a really good bike is 15 pounds, that's almost a minute gap with the same power. This is why on a sprint at the end of a race you'll see riders throwing off their water bottles.

Now you have to be fit, a professional rider on a 25 pound bike will pass an out of shape banker on a 15 pound bike any day. However even in physically unfit people, they showed improvement ( just can't remember how much)

But another big diffrence is in how stiff the bike is. Most bikes flex when you pedal, you might not see it, but they do. When a bike flexes you loose power. However making stiff bikes that won't ahnialite your ass like a prison rapist is expensive.

Finally the big diffrence in bikes and cars is that bikes can be pushed to the limit even on public roads. Now like I said befor, many of these bikes are bought as status symbols but they do have the preformance to back up the price.

maximillious > puddler
02/27/2014 at 19:54

Kinja'd!!!