One of the UK major distributors, Fisher Outdoor Leisure, is in the process of launching its new brand of bikes – Eastway, named after a now defunct London race track and designed for urban riding.
Stocks of Eastway bikes should start arriving at the launch retailers within the next few weeks. It’s a full range of 13 bikes to begin with including road bikes with and without disc brakes, flat bar urban bikes with discs, two cyclocross bikes (both with discs), a track bike and an Audax style steel bike.
The range is targeted at urban riding and in particular fast urban riding as you’ll see from the launch video below. These aren’t sit up and beg bikes, according to Eastway, they’re designed to be strong for the challenges of urban conditions – Potholes, rough roads and differing surfaces. Eastway told me the bikes have been designed over a 2 year period to suit British conditions. Of course one of the things that means is that all alloy framed bikes will have mudguard mounts when the production models come through shortly, something regular readers will know I’m a big fan of. There are also lots of 32 spoke wheelsets, again for strength and reliability.
The frames are built to be strong too and have been tested to a level 40% above that of a CEN test (on of the industry standard frame tests).
You can get a flavour of the ethos behind the designs here:
Prices run from £599 to £1999. The range tops out with the RD1.0 disk equipped carbon road bike reviewed in the latest issue of Cycling Plus. They had an interesting point on the rise of disc equipped bikes in that it’s more likely to be driven from newcomers to cycling and the entry level than the high and that may well turn out to be true. Certainly you’ll be able to buy the Eastway FB (Flat Bar) 4.0 for £599 and then follow the disc path up to the £1999 RD1.0 (Road Disc) or the CX1.0 (Cyclocross) – both full carbon framed bikes with tapered forks.
As Fisher are the SRAM distributor in the UK – all Eastway bikes feature SRAM components including Avid Road Discs.
Eastway say the bikes are designed to be versatile and ok for multi-use thanks to the strength they’ve built into the frames, the geometry (which typically isn’t too racey), the wheelsets and the fork clearances. They even suggested for example that the FB (Flat Bar) range was tough enough and had enough clearance for a bit of light off roading/cyclocross.
It’s always interesting to see a new brand launched and it appears that a good amount of thought has gone into the bikes. They’re not going to be sold online and to begin with there are 30 launch dealers around the country.
They’re definitely a masculine looking range, focussed for urban riding in British conditions and lets be honest – more of the population live in towns and cities than the country now. I can’t say how any of them ride as yet. Cycling Plus were certainly positive about the RD1.0 that they tested and I’m sure they’ll have more bikes out for review soon. It’s a big decision to launch a brand and with the two years that have been put into so far I’m guessing the range will be well sorted, well made and ride well.
You can find more information on Eastway at their site:
They are also on Facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/eastwaybikes
And on Twitter as @EastwayBikes
Thanks for reading…