You may have seen my recent post on Stoemper Bikes brilliant Stoepid week, where they got a bunch of guys including Bicycling Magazine’s Bill Strickland (@TrueBS) and attempted to ride 5 of the toughest and most famous spring classics in a week (see more here: http://girodilento.com/the-brilliance-of-stoepid-week ).
Part of the point of Stoepid week was all of the riders were out on the new Stoemper road bikes which I’d been looking forward to the launch of as I’ve loved the look of the Eddy and Ronny cyclocross bikes since I saw first them.
Yesterday, Stoemper updated their website and launched the new road bikes. These are the Darrell which is a handmade aluminium road frame, made by Todd right down to the fact that he makes the tubes first. I saw a tweet saying that Bill Strickland rode a Darrell on Stoepid week and the whole bike weighed just 16lbs, which is a decent weight for a strong frame. Stoemper say that in Todd’s hands the Darrell gives a great ride quality and still offers excellent power transfer. With a tapered head tube (hand made by Todd), ENVE fork, triple butted main tubes and S-bend seat and chain stays it might be a bike to reassess your views on aluminium race bikes. Hopefully it won’t be too long before Bill Strickland shares his experiences of riding the spring classic routes on one including the cobbles and climbs.
The other new frame is the Taylör again hand made by Todd but using True Temper S3 steel which builds up into a light frame by steel standards but still gives the legendary ride quality. Now to be honest I’ve not yet ridden a good steel frame in anger – titanium yes but steel no, so the Taylör in particular has piqued my interest. Again I love the description that it’s a torpedo, a wrecking ball but with the fantastic ride quality of steel. It’s sounds like a bruiser performance wise but not when it comes to the ride quality. It sounds like a fun bike to ride fast and far on (and perfect for those spring classics rides).
Stoemper are also doing some great paint work too (again at Todd’s hands) like this with the Belgian flag. There are more photos of different colour options on the website in the media section
I really like what Stoemper are doing – both with the bikes and the brand (right down to the great logo) – I find the banding fun and refreshingly straightforward but it’s obvious that there’s a serious side too – the guys at Stoemper look to be trying to build some genuinely great metal bikes both in steel and aluminium fusing the best bits of US and European geometries not to mention cycling in general. As much as I love my carbon bike I want a great metal bike too – so watch this space… and in the meantime I leave you with this cool short video on Todd of Stoemper:
You can find more info on the bikes including geometry and pricing etc here: http://www.stoemper.com/
Thanks for reading
