Cannondale Stealth Concept Bike

Its cool looking. Stylistically-speaking, its a mixture of aero and aero-looking details, in a geometry and user intention that is very non-aero. The wheel cutouts, faired-in stem and fork, and horizontal chainstays making a sharp diagonal to the rear drops are features found on TT bikes. The hard chamfers in the tube profiles are not. Minus the flat bars and disc brakes, it resembles the sketches found early in the TT bike design phase before the aero people come in and say “you have to get rid of those edges.”

Well executed design concept overall. Pointless, but pretty.

hmmmm looks like it’s setup like an old school XC mtb.

road position, but straight bars + mtb technology.

and then skinnies….

i like that tubing shape but….

old madone + magic motorcycle + lefty = Old Magic Lefonety

I’ll be here all week…

That is one beautiful steed. Surely the design is so that photo radar won’t work on the speedier commuters.

@slippy,

Good points — at first glance, I didn’t see monocoque carbon wonder, but hydroformed alum.

What does this bike want to be? It could only be a Cannondale…

It’s a deluxe park trail/charity rider. The saddle won’t be too comfortable in cargo shorts.

@Champs,

You mean a bike path bike for the much sought-after masters disposable-income racer demographic? So after wining a TT on their DA Electric-equipped Look TT machine, they pop onto this bad boy for a cool down on the trail?

i don’t see any Magic Motorcycle in this piece. You probably are noticing the “rose thorn” profile to the back of the seat tube when you see a Trek Madone, but the Madone had merely been inspired by true aero-profiled seat tubes that actually faired in the rear wheel.

If anything, I’d say the fork shows a lot more influence from Mike Burrows “Windcheetah” concept bike from the Eighties, which prominently featured a single-sided aero fork with a hub mounted brake. That bike eventually evolved into Chris Boardman’s 1992 gold medal pursuit bike, also with a single-sided fork.

The frame’s silhouette could be compared to any number of time trial bike, especially the down tube cut out for the front wheel and the fork crown/head tube interface, but this concept bike has a more angular, “fractal” type surface similar to 2nd generation US military stealth aircraft (eg, F-117). Hence the concept bike’s name “Stealth”.

I like the headset/stem design that works to continue the smooth line of the top tube, but there are a number of concept bicycles in the past that have incorporated the same elements as the “Stealth”. The Cervélo Baracchi concept bike (1994) for one.

Overall, the bike seems ride-able to me. The wheels are Cosmic Carbone rims laced onto disc hubs and all the components outside of the headset/stem seem to be off the shelf. Also remember that flatbar roadbikes are a serious category in Europe. But stem looks to have no height adjustment, and that won’t fly for a production bike. I’m not sure the market is robust enough to make the required monocoque construction technique economically viable, either.

What’s this bike trying to be? It’s a concept bike meant to provoke an aesthetic response, and it does it convincingly. I could see myself riding this bike and thinking it’s cool. I don’t see this being produced though.

If you want to see more bikes that look cool but are even more unsuitable for production and often unrideable, google Specialized’s Robert Egger, who has been knocking out concept bikes as long as anyone in the business.

Bike, what bike?

It looks like a mutt. Mostly TT/Triathlon bike, but with flat bars and disc brakes.

Seems like it came from a very creative designer, with acute ADHD.

Would probably do a bunch of thinks okay, but wouldn’t be great at absolutely anything.

@Byron,

Some people just need to have and be the best everything; my wife’s boss comes to mind here. He drives a Porsche (just like Lumbergh) and tries goading people on the highway into racing. He would never own a bicycle unless he was challenged into doing a charity ride by some other executive. This bike is what he’d come away with, because it has every bell and whistle, plus a flat bar so he doesn’t have to wear a “clown suit” to ride it.

And to those people goes DA Electric …

What does this bike want to be?

That is easy, it wants to be MINE!!

It looks like something the Bike Snob would love.

It wants to be hideous, and it succeeds. It needs ‘All you haters suck my balls’ on the rims, though.

and fast as fuck on the top tube …

They forgot one trend, belt drive…

e-drive my friend — electric belt drive.

All,

Industry-insider sourced photos from Eurobike.

• Side view
• Fork
• Cockpit

That’ll be a great bike for Cannondale; plenty of room for lots of Cannondale stickers.