New Ravens at London Cycle Show

[ahconway]

Occasionally, living in London does have its bikey benefits. One of them is being able to attend the Cycle Show every year with little fuss. I vividly remember seeing the prototype of the Raven Tour a couple years back, and I had one myself a little over a year later.

So while most of the show was a bit of a snoozer, there were two nice additions to the Thorn Stable being shown in public for the first time (and I can't believe we haven't seen them first on the Forum!!!). The first one that caught my eye was the step-through version of the Raven Tour. It's a very interesting frame design, one of two new ones on offer. My wife and I had been discussing this for ages since it would be great to get her on a Raven, but she'd really prefer a step-through. (I posed this problem to the Forum months ago... see http://www.sjscycles.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=508)

The big head-turner is the Rohloff-equipped ZXTZ. It appears to be a super-lightweight (19.5 lb) rocketship of a bike, with a custom frameset in Reynolds 853. I'm sure it's worth every penny of the £2799 they're asking for it! The person I was speaking to couldn't tell me where the name from (she suggested it was random!).

So, while there was little else of interest at the show, the Thorn stand made up for it as usual.

Thanks guys!

I've posted photos of the bikes and the rest of the show at http://homepage.mac.com/ahconway/cycling/PhotoAlbum33.html .

[PH]

Thanks for posting those Ahconway, some interesting photos (there’s an extra stop at the end of the link that needs removing).  That ZXTZ looks very bling, but just where do they get that price from[:0] It’s £1,300 dearer than a Cyclosportif and over a grand dearer than a custom Rohloff Mercian. I notice that even after all the promotion of the comfort bars, the fast models all have straight ones.

 

[ahconway]

Thanks for the reply note about the extra full stop! Very odd - the forum added the hyperlinks to those URLs on its own and lumped the stop in as well.

I didn't know that Mercian did Rohloffs, custom or otherwise! Didn't see anything on their website, either... what do you know about it?

quote:Originally posted by PH

Thanks for posting those Ahconway, some interesting photos (there’s an extra stop at the end of the link that needs removing).  That ZXTZ looks very bling, but just where do they get that price from[:0] It’s £1,300 dearer than a Cyclosportif and over a grand dearer than a custom Rohloff Mercian. I notice that even after all the promotion of the comfort bars, the fast models all have straight ones.

 

[PH]

quote:Originally posted by ahconway

I didn't know that Mercian did Rohloffs, custom or otherwise! Didn't see anything on their website, either... what do you know about it?

They're not promoting it in the same way as Thorn.  Just a small mention in the news section of the website.
A photo of one here
http://bikereader.com/forum/index.php?topic=710.165

[graham]

quote:I notice that even after all the promotion of the comfort bars, the fast models all have straight ones.

I had assumed it was because the comfort bars are riser bars, and the people who buy the fast models are more likely to be used to drop bars and a lower bar position. Of course, I could be wrong but wouldn't be surprised if a non-riser comfort bar becomes available at some point in the future.