Although I started cycling as a mountain biker, I took an interest in the Tour de France, and became an avid follower during the Lance Armstrong years, which made me at least appreciate road bikes and road cycling.
Colnago was a name I knew through following The Tour, but back in the UK when I was considering buying a road bike I had my heart set on a Bianchi. I loved the look of the celeste and yellow Bianchi Marco Pantani was riding, and I could get an aluminum Bianchi painted in similar colors for around £1500.
A couple of years later I was living in the US and I’d bought a Yeti road bike from my friend Joe who worked for Yeti Cycles.
One Saturday afternoon I was in the bike store ‘Two Wheel Tango’ in Ann Arbor. They were a Colnago dealer and had a Colnago Carbonissimo frame hanging on the wall. It was both the most expensive and the most beautiful bike frame I’d ever seen. I think I was mesmerized by the carbon fiber weave and how perfect the frame looked. That must have been either 2000 or 2001 and I remember the frame being on sale for around $7,000, which is a lot of money now in 2022, and ridiculously expensive back then. That put Colnago on a very high pedestal for me – very desirable but out of reach – but that didn’t bother me because I would have been dreaming about buying the latest full suspension Yeti mountain bike back then rather than a different road bike.
Between 2002 and 2004 I was working as an engineer on the Alfa Romeo variant of the General Motors High Feature V6 engine. This entailed monthly trips from the US to Alfa Romeo in Italy who at that time were located just North West of Milan in a small town called Arese. On one of the trips in 2002 I had a couple of hours to kill before I needed to head to the airport for the flight home, so I decided to visit the Colnago factory in Cambiago which is North East of Milan. I figured it wasn’t too far from Alfa Romeo and even though it was taking me the wrong direction, I could still get to the airport in time. This was before the days of satellite navigation in cars and iPhones with GPS apps, but I found Cambiago on a map and fought my way through Friday afternoon traffic to get there.
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. The factory/headquarters building was relatively small, on what I remember being an otherwise residential street. I arrived unannounced, hoping that they might let me take a look around, or at a minimum let me have a look in what appeared to be a showroom. I’d visited the Yeti factory numerous times in Golden, Colorado, and in 1998 I visited the GT factory in Santa Anna, California. The front of the building where the workshops were, had open doors so I could see in, which is how I got the photos below:
After standing gazing in for a while, one of the Colnago staff members came to see what I wanted. I asked if I could have a look around. It became obvious they weren’t used to entertaining visitors – especially those who show up unannounced – he gave me a very nice hardbound book/catalogue, and politely asked me to leave.
So much for that, but oh well – nothing ventured, nothing gained – and it was still nice to have seen what I had seen.
In 2017, I started getting back into cycling after a hiatus due to family life and golf. In the spring I started riding my road bike while the trails were drying out, and I realized how much I was enjoying it. My Yeti Road Project was ok, but at that stage it was 16 years old and I started thinking about a change. That got me thinking about Colnagos and wondering if one could be had for a reasonable price used. I found a Colnago C50 frame for sale on eBay which seemed reasonable, but I was concerned it might be just that bit too small, compared to the geometry charts for my Yeti. I kept searching and after missing out on a Colnago M10 frameset, that looked great, I scored an incredible deal on a Colnago CX-1. The CX-1 has a monocoque front triangle with a lug and tube rear. It was Colnago’s race bike when it was introduced, and after an EVO model was replaced by the M10 which in turn was replaced by the V1-R.
I built up the CX-1 with the 9 speed Ultegra components and Mavic Ksyrium wheels from my Yeti Road Project, which meant I only needed to buy bars, stem, cables, bar tape and a braze on front mech (the mech front mech on the Yeti used a clamp). I also picked up a used Colnago Selle Italia saddle on eBay for $25. The bike as pictured below cost me less than $1,000 (excluding the value of the carry-over Ultegra components):
It was a big step up from the Yeti, it was lighter and more responsive, but importantly not as harsh as the Yeti was on the rough roads I ride. The carbon frame was more compliant than the aluminum frame of the Yeti where it needed to be, but stiff where it needed to be also.
I looked out for bargains on eBay and the online bike stores, and over time I collected all the components I needed for a Campagnolo 11 speed Record build. I had zero knowledge or experience with Campagnolo, but I loved the aesthetics and it only seemed right to have Campagnolo on a Colnago. Then came a set of Zipp 404s, which were great wheels.
The Ultegra components and Mavic wheels went back on to the Yeti which became a spare bike and has since been mounted to my Wahoo trainer apart from the occasional outing.
I thought the CX-1 was a superb bike and I had it spec’d just as I wanted it (I remember deliberating for hours deciding which water bottle cages would best suit the bike – I ended up with FSA carbon cages that were black/white/red). I rode it for around 5,000 miles, I did my first century and other notable rides on it.
I was now more of a ‘roadie’ than a mountain biker, realizing that the time I would have previously spent in the car driving to a mountain bike trail to ride, could be better used to ride my road bike from home – and time was limited due to my commitments as a family man. I was also enjoying group rides with the R3 cycling club I’d joined in the Spring of 2018.
The CX-1 was great, but there’s always something better – the next bike. For me that was a Colnago Concept, which was their aero bike. I thought the Concept was a cool looking bike – in certain colorways – in others looked a but ‘dull’. My favorite was the black and gold art decor colorway, which was my dream bike at the time, and anything but dull.
I looked for months, but couldn’t find a Concept frame with rim brakes (I didn’t want the expense of new carbon wheels, and Campagnolo disk brake components seemed very expensive) in my size, at the right price and with a colorway I wanted. It then became apparent that the Concept was being discontinued and there’d be slim pickings, so I started looking at different options.
I found a V2-R frameset for a good price, but it was in matt black (TNBK) which didn’t appeal, and by the time I’d convinced myself it’d be ok, it had sold. Disappointed I’d missed out, and now decided I was getting a new bike (or frameset at least), I kept looking and found a great deal on a new V1-R frameset on bikeexchange.com. I’d been put off the V1-R due to the bottom bracket mounted rear brake, but this was an incredible deal and my favorite of the V1-R colorways. Being a car guy, I must admit that having a bike that was developed in collaboration with Ferrari and having a Ferrari logo on the top tube also appealed.
In time honored fashion, the wheels and components from the CX-1 were used to build the V1-R.
Then, again over time, I searched and waited for the best deals – this time on 11 speed Super Record components. When I had what I needed I rebuilt the V1-R and swapped the Record components back over to the CX-1, so I could use the CX-1 as a spare bike (or second spare road bike, because I still had the Yeti Road Project – but that was my trainer bike)
I’d read of people complaining about the bottom bracket mounted rear brake on the V1-R. The complaints were around servicing and adjusting brake pads, and some complaints about the rear brake picking up more dirt in that location. I’d decided these were issues I could live with, but I found was that I was getting significantly more brake rub when out of the saddle sprinting, or climbing than I was used to with CX-1. I attributed this mainly to the bottom bracket mounted rear brake, but realized it was due to differences in stiffness between frame and the rear wheel, and the V1-R must have been different to the CX-1 in some way. This was bothering me to the extent that I was beginning to regret the purchase. I later found a review on Velonews describing this issue, which made me wish I’d done more research.
I was expecting the V1-R to be an upgrade relative to the CX-1 but how could it be if I was experiencing brake rub, which was zapping power. A fix was to open up the clearance between the brake pads and the rim, but at the expense of braking capability.
After quite some research, it seemed that the Zipp wheels weren’t particularly good in regards to lateral stiffness due to the hubs, which could be contributing to the brake rub issue. I picked up a set of Campagnolo Bora WTO 60s and the brake rub was very much reduced. The Zipps were sold on eBay for more or less what I paid for them two years earlier.
Upgrades also included a Deda Superzero stem and carbon bars, which looked great fitting in well with the squared off tubes of the bike and were very comfortable.
Other than the brake rub issue, which was mitigated by the Bora wheels to the extent that it was no longer a concern, the V1-R has been an excellent bike and has performed very well over the 5,000 miles I’ve ridden it.
Anther passion besides cycling has always been cars. That’s what got my into engineering which made it possible for me to live and work in the US. I always loved AMG Mercedes and in 2013 I was fortunate enough to buy an E55 AMG Mercedes, which had the 5.5l supercharged V8 engine. I owned that for three years and replaced it with an E63. I’d owned that for a couple of years and realized that it wasn’t the most practical car – especially during Michigan winters – and it wasn’t very good at transporting bikes. I concluded that bikes were more of a priority for me than fast cars. The E63 went and was replaced by a two year old Jeep Grand Cherokee. The logic was also that that the money I was saving by having a less expensive car could go towards a dream bike – a C64 maybe!
So by now, I was a bonafide ‘Colnago Fanboy’. As well as riding on the road, I was now riding gravel a lot. I’d been looking for months for either a Colnago Prestige or G3-X to replace the Kona Super Jake I was using to ride gravel. That didn’t pan out and it became apparent that I’d be waiting over a year for a G3-X frame. I ended up with a Look gravel frame and wrote about it here.
I’d been e-mailing a lot with Maris, the owner of Brava Cycles – a Colnago dealer in Latvia – about the availability of a G3-X frame in my size. He seemed very good and his prices were the best I’d seen. I’d also noticed his prices for C64 frames, which didn’t seem that far out of reach. I loved my V1-R, but the C64 was the ultimate superbike in my opinion, and I’d been watching YouTube videos such as this:
I’d seen a C60 frameset in a store before, and I could imagine how incredible a C64 must look, especially in one of the new ‘Frozen’ colorways such as this bike in Frozen red, code RCRD. The Frozen paint schemes are offered in a number of colors, but I really liked the red.
In the spring of 2021, I sold my CX-1 realizing I wasn’t riding it as I had my V1-R, and I didn’t really need two spare road bikes and a gravel bike that could do double duty as a road bike spare. By the summer, I was in a position to order a C64 frameset. I placed the order with Brava Cycles in July and was told it would be a 4-5 month wait, meaning I’d receive the frame in November or December. If I received the frame in December, then I wouldn’t be riding it until March due to the weather, but this would give me time to assemble the components I needed to build it.
After being told that frames were taking longer to arrive from Colnago, and it might be January/February before I see the frame, out of the blue I received an e-mail from Maris saying my frame had arrived and was ready to ship. He also sent me a photo of my frame next to two other Frozen C64s he was about to ship. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it.
The frame arrived the Monday after Thanksgiving and it didn’t disappoint. Then I built the bike up over the next month or so, here it is finished. I wrote about the build here.
