Price: $15,00 as specced / $8500 – full custom geo frameset
Weight: 7.3Kg- Size 56
Sizes: 12 off-the-shelf, or fully custom
Groupset: Shimano Dura-Ace di2
Wheels: Argonaut 43 Wheelset
Tyres: Continental GP 5000 TR
What makes a dream bike? Sometimes it’s the bike that won the Tour de France, ridden by a sporting idol. Sometimes it’s a custom-made piece of rolling art, crafted from titanium or steel. Occasionally it’s the product of a bike brand with a compelling story or a magnetic frame builder at its heart. In recent years, though, there’s emerged a growing divide between the very best Far Eastern mass manufacture frames – boasting lighter weight, better aerodynamics – and the homegrown custom forever frame built with love.
Argonaut, a North American bespoke bike brand, makes a bright proposition – a bike with all the weight-saving, precision manufacturing of factory-produced “monocoque” carbon moulding, but handmade, homegrown and with a carbon layup bespoke to the very last fibre.
Built-in Portland Oregon, the RM3 is a striking intersection of the latest in mass-production bike engineering and homegrown customisation and attention to detail. The RM3 is the brand’s newest flagship offering on the roadside, and at a glance, it shows everything that has changed in road cycling in the last 10 years.
Flashback to the hazy days of 2014 and a high-end custom bike would have dramatic differences – disc brakes were exceedingly rare, tyre clearance was 28mm at a push, cables were ornately exposed and typically round tubes would be bound together in ornately wrapped carbon joints. While that latter feature presented some beautiful bikes and elegant custom design opportunities, it was also a design which passed up some of the advantages of mass-manufactured carbon frames.
Despite the Argonaut’s RM3 classic curves, it boasts the latest in wide tyre clearance, disc brakes and versatility, but it’s the engineering story below the skin which really sets the RM3 apart.
It would be easy to unroll the full history of Argonaut since its inception in 2007 – but that perhaps deserves a separate article. To tell the story of this RM3, though, we at least require a deep dive into the process behind the brand. So excuse me while we get a tad granular.
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