Cannondale has today launched an all-new version of its long standing CAAD alloy road bike, now up to its 14th iteration, with a lineage that can be traced back to the Seaco days. The latest iteration, by the silhouette at the very least, looks to hark back to days gone by when seat stays met horizontal top tubes and the thought of ‘aero socks’ would get you laughed out of the club ride.
Unusually, compared to most new bikes, the latest CAAD14 is actually heavier than the outgoing model, though aluminium doesn’t have quite the same performance tweaks that carbon does in terms of layup tweaks and reduction in resin usage.
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From a silhouette standpoint, the thing you’ll notice is that the bike looks all-new. The seat stays are back up to where the top tube joins the seat tube, and the top tube itself appears to be nearly totally horizontal, even sloping slightly down towards the head tube in some angles, but I suspect that’s just a trick of perspective and the tapering of the tube playing tricks on me.
This does mean you’re going to get less seatpost stick-out, which will impact compliance, but the seatpost is a standard 27.2 arrangement, and the tyre clearance has been uprated to 32mm with 4mm of room either side, up from 30mm on the old version. In practice, this means, with a relatively stiff set of wheels, you could potentially accommodate a 35 if you don’t mind risking the paint (or clear lacquer).
The frame is now UDH compatible, and no longer will anyone be put off by a press-fit bottom bracket, as the CAAD14 is back to a sensible, easy to live with BSA threaded system. The new frame does way slightly more than the old model, likely due to the stays and top tube changing in geometry, meaning there’s just more metal, to the tune of 228g for a painted vs painted scenario, or 98g if you’re comparing one of the raw frames with a painted CAAD13.
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