I think I’m disinclined to buy a new bike for Christmas regardless of the price. I’d rather wait and see what the new UCI rules are and what the new UCI-compliant frames are going to look like.
On the other hand, after the new rules hit maybe some of the super nice bikes from 2020 will be available on the aftermarket at really nice prices. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a really nice price on a bike that I wasn’t selling.
I’m really on the edge of my seat to see what bikes are going to look like next year…but maybe next year is too early in the design cycle. Don’t even think the new rules are set in stone yet. But 2021 could be the year everybody learns what a compensation triangle is.
Agreed. Booms like the current situation always have a Bust to follow. When that happens, there will be a minor flood of people selling new-ish gear that was only partly used. I’ve seen it in a few forms over the decades, and the sheer size of this boom means the bust is likely to be proportionally large.
To the main question, considering the typical development cycle for a bike (at least a couple of years), unless they have prior info or gambled on bike design with hopes of hitting within predicted changes, we won’t see “new” bikes for the “new” rules until 2022 or so at best. Wait if you want, but it is likely years before the rubber meets the road from the changes.
Yup. I’m hoping I can scoop up a nice, little used smart trainer then. The timing is good: I’ll be treating myself to a new road bike next year. And I’ll have to start saving for a new toy.
Yeah, that. I was told that those rules can be subject to change right up to the day of release, too. So it may be quite some time before we can buy a bike that fully leverages any new rule set. Maybe we’ll just have to make our own compensation triangles and tape them to the frame!
I’m sure big companies like Specialized are able to allocate more resources to theoretical frame designs that are easy to revise to meet any new design rule changes. So we would probably be able to see new bikes from them before other, smaller companies.
If they start prototyping and testing now (or even a couple months earlier depending on their insider knowledge) we might see new bikes appearing at the end of 2021(?). But that might be a bit ambitious.
There are enough design changes that this could be a whole new ground up design and not just an updated Venge. Maybe a mix between the Venge and Shiv TT??
There is a popular theory I’ve heard kicked around that the Venge isn’t truly gone it’s just waiting for the UCI rules to be finalized & then the next incarnation of the Venge will be Specialized first product taking advantage of the new rules.
One thing to watch for, and we saw this with disc brakes, is just because the UCI makes it legal does not mean that all national (and state/provincial) jurisdictions immediately follow suit.
There was a time where UCI was legal, USAC was delayed, and portions of Canada were even slower to adopt. This led to the now infamous Justin Williams Gas Town Grand Prix bike fiasco.
