While gravel is the hot space in terms of new bikes in the last few years, there is usually an undertone in each new gravel bike release to the effect that a racy gravel bike also makes a very competent endurance road bike. It’s something Factor said outright in the launch of its new Ostro Gravel race bike.
With this in mind it’s certainly heartening to see that things work from the other direction too; adding gravelly details to the best endurance road bikes may possibly improve it.
This appears to have been the thought in the design room of the new Wilier Gran Turismo at least, given it has vast tyre clearances and rear elastomer damping reminiscent of the extremely gravelly BMC URS One.
The endurance/gravel crossover
We’re at a point now where bike genres are significantly less defined than they were even a handful of years ago. Endurance road bikes like the Specialized Roubaix can handle light gravel duties, the best aero road bikes are perfectly happy taking on Paris Roubaix, and bikes like the Specialized Tarmac SL7 eschew labels entirely in favour of just being ‘a race bike’.
Nominally the Wilier Gran Turismo is an endurance road bike, but given it can fit wide tyres (officially 32mm but undoubtedly more) and has a semi-suspended rear end, it shouldn’t baulk if you decide to veer off down a well-paved forest road to get a quick viewpoint pic for the ‘gram.
The rear suspension is the key talking point for this new bike, and relies on the inherent flex built into the still relatively beefy chainstays. At the upper portion of the rear triangle, the seat stays wrap around the seat tube and connect, via an elastomer, directly to the top tube.
On the standard model this elastomer is a preset job, based around average rider weight, but if you opt for the upper-tier SRAM Red or Shimano Dura-Ace models you can go for a 3D-printed custom elastomer, tuned to your specific needs.
Specs and availability
Adding bells and whistles to any bike increases its weight, but even when adding in the necessary engineering to allow the rear end to flex under load the standard, SRAM Force equipped complete build still only tips the scales at 7.8kg. Go for a more premium build and it’ll come in even lighter, and conversely if you swap out the stock Continental GP5000’s for something super-wide and full of tubeless sealant you’re obviously going to make that number larger.
Speaking of large numbers the Wilier Gran Turismo starts at around…
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