There’s No Good Reason to Buy a Carbon Bike
The pro racers who do need carbon fiber bikes get them for free. Only the people who don’t need them actually pay for them.
Carbon fiber is light. It’s strong. It can be used to build everything from frames to seat posts to handlebars to cranks. And it’s one of the worst things that’s happened to bikes.
Now, to be clear, carbon fiber makes perfect sense for professional racing. Because it’s basically a fabric, builders can mold it into all sorts of aerodynamic shapes. Moreover, they can tune ride quality and maintain strength while simultaneously keeping the weight to a minimum in a way that’s not really possible with metal tubing. It used to be that racers had to choose between a light bike and an aero bike; now they can have both, all thanks to the miraculous properties of carbon fiber. At this point, there’s no reason for elite competitors to use anything else.
Gift Yourself More Adventure
But here’s the thing: you’re not them. I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you, but you’re almost certainly incapable of milking the handful of seconds a wind tunnel-sculpted pro-level carbon fiber race machine might theoretically net you in certain situations. Moreover, the pro racers who do need carbon fiber bikes get them for free; only the people who don’t need them actually pay for them. This means that, ipso facto, if you’ve purchased a carbon fiber bicycle, you’ve made a mistake.
“Okay, fine, I may not be Jonas Vingegaard,” you may be thinking. “Maybe I didn’t need a carbon bike. But how does that mean I’ve made a mistake?”
Simple: while you’re not able to extract carbon fiber’s small performance benefits, you are in an ideal position to experience its many drawbacks—and for normal people, carbon fiber bicycles have only drawbacks.
This is Bike Snob NYC writing for Outside Online, by the way.
Simple: while you’re not able to extract carbon fiber’s small performance benefits, you are in an ideal position to experience its many drawbacks—and for normal people, carbon fiber bicycles have only drawbacks.
Probably the biggest drawback to carbon fiber bikes is that they’re like eggs. You know how eggs are almost impossible to break if you squeeze them from the pointy ends, but if you squeeze them any other way you’ll quickly wind up with a handful of yolk? Similarly, while carbon bikes are quite strong when used as designed, what they’re designed for is racing. They’re not designed for crashing, falling off a hitch rack, getting knocked over in the garage by your young children, or any of the other little mishaps that befall normal people’s bicycles as part of the messy business of day-to-day living.
And no, I’m not one of those retrogrouches who’s afraid of carbon bikes and thinks they’re all about to explode at any moment. In fact, I rode a 35 year-old carbon bike through the Swiss Alps. (It was a finely aged hunk of cheese.) Yes, I know they make airplanes out of it. Yes, I know it can often be repaired. Yes, I know the majority of people who own carbon fiber bikes won’t have a problem with them. But airplanes have a whole federal agency looking after them, and who the hell wants to have to send their bicycle frame out for repair because of some dumb little crash in the first place?
