New 5.9kg Scott Addict RC is the ‘lightest bike Scott has ever made’ and still has room for 34mm tyres
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The new Scott Addict RC is here – or what there is of it, 5.9kg of bike to be precise.
Scott has officially updated its climbing bike for the first time since 2020, claiming the new Addict RC is the ‘lightest ever road bike’ the brand has produced.
The new bike features far more slender tube profiles, frame walls as thin as 0.6 millimetres, and a world class spec which all help keep weight to a minimum. The bike hopes to be genuinely user-friendly too, with 34mm tyre clearance, an integrated handlebar multitool, and enough of a focus on aerodynamics to be within a stones throw of the brand’s aero Foil RC aero race bike.
The headlines
First things first, let’s tackle the main headlines, and first answer the question – is this the lightest ever production road bike full stop?
A quick Google search brings up two familiar contenders. First up is the Specialized S-Works Aethos, boasting a claimed weight of 6.34 kilos. Then there’s the AX Lightness VIAL Evo Ultra, with an eye-popping weight of just 4.8 kilos.
The AX Lightness may win the numbers game, but it sacrifices practicality in the process. The Addict RC, on the other hand, balances feather-lightness with usability, featuring disc brakes, decent tire clearance, and a host of other features I’ll explore shortly.
As far as claimed weights go, we are looking at 600 grams for an unpainted medium frame, and 270 grams for an unpainted regular-length fork which makes for a 161 and 54-gram respective weight saving over the outgoing model. It’s worth noting these weights are for the HMX-SL frameset, which is only available in the Addict RC Ultimate build. The HMX frameset found on the other four build options weighs around 40 grams more.
The new bike also claims to 12 watts faster than its predecessor, and just 9 watts slower than the Scott Foil RC aero bike at a test speed of 45kph and yaw angles of +/- 15 degrees, when testing the frames independent of their components.
Scott has also gone to great lengths to shave precious grams off of the whole frame kit (that includes hardware), with further savings being made in the seatpost, and Syncros one-piece carbon fibre cockpit.
The specification – how did they get the weight so low?
If you love watching engineers push boundaries just because they can, you’ll enjoy…