Check out the 2011 Canyon Ultimate CF SLX, the first road.cc Bike of the Year

Rim brakes, mechanical shifting, external cables… our first Bike of the Year was very different from most of the contenders fighting it out for the 2024-25 top spot, although the 2011 Canyon Ultimate CF SLX was extraordinarily impressive for its time.

We’re currently putting together the road.cc Recommends awards for 2024-25 – which we’ll run next month – and that got us thinking back to our first Bike of the Year. Our awards have evolved massively over the years, but the basic concept has remained the same throughout; we look back at everything we’ve reviewed over the previous 12 months and pick our favourite products based on performance and value. That’s it. Well, it’s complicated by the fact that we review hundreds of products here every year, so going through everything and making the right decisions is a monumental undertaking, but the idea is pretty straightforward.

We published our first road.cc Bikes of the Year Top 10 on 1st January 2012, and it covered everything we’d reviewed in the 2011 calendar year. Plenty of big-name brands were represented, including Trek, Cannondale, and Kinesis, but it was the £2,619 Canyon Ultimate CF SLX 8.0 that secured the top spot. It was very much a product of its time.

These days, Canyon divides its road bikes into three platforms: the aero Aeroad (introduced in 2010), the endurance-focused Endurace (introduced in 2014), and the lightweight Ultimate. The first Ultimate was unveiled at the Eurobike expo in Germany way back in 2004, a carbon-fibre race bike designed to be lightweight and stiff.

A second-generation Ultimate was launched in 2007, and this version of the frameset was still current in 2011. This is the iteration on which Cadel Evans won the World Championships in 2009, Philippe Gilbert won Giro di Lombardia in the same year, and Andre Greipel piloted to a stage victory in the 2011 Tour de France. It already had an enviable CV.

In 2024, £2,619 is still a fair old wedge of cash to spend on a bike, but it won’t get you a professional-level race machine, sadly. Back in 2011, though, you got a whole lot of bike for the money. Fair enough, some models in our top-10 were considerably more expensive, such as a £7,500 Trek Speed Concept, but the Canyon Ultimate CF SLX 8.0 came with an excellent carbon-fibre frame and fork, Shimano’s top-level Dura-Ace groupset, and Mavic Ksyrium Elite wheels. That was 7900 series Dura-Ace, by the way – 10-speed with mechanical shifting. Shimano had already introduced Dura-Ace Di2, but it wasn’t specced on this bike.

We were impressed by the frame rigidity supplied by chunky tubing thoughout. Canyon’s Maximus seat tube was interesting in that it started out skinny at the top before bulging out massively on the non-driveside to provide as much frame rigidity as possible while still offering enough clearance for the front derailleur and the chainset. This was the source of a patent dispute with Cervelo, which was eventually settled out of court. They all ended up friends.

Canyon used seatstays just 13mm in diameter to engineer in some compliance at the rear, although those seatstays reached right up to the junction between the seat tube and the top tube. Some brands were already using dropped seatstays to add extra comfort at that time, but they were by no means as prevalent as they are today. That said, today’s Canyon Ultimate is one of the comparatively few top=level race bikes that doesn’t use dropped seatstays.

> What are dropped seatstays good for? Should you get a bike with them?

Canyon’s VCLS seatpost was designed to add more comfort. Canyon still has VCLS posts in its range, but that one from 2011 included basalt fibres designed to provide better damping to absorb shock. The blades of Canyon's One One Four SLX fork contained these basalt fibres in with the carbon for the same purpose.

The Ultimate CF SLX was available in five different builds back in 2011, the most expensive version being the £3,909 9.0 Team decked out with a Campagnolo Super Record groupset and Mavic R-Sys SL wheels. The 8.0 we reviewed was the cheapest model, but you still got Shimano Dura-Ace and Mavic Ksyrium Elite wheels.

The Ultimate CF SLX’s ride was all about efficiency. There was next to no flex at the bottom bracket and cornering was super-accurate. Our 58cm review model weighed 6.96kg (15.3lb) on the road.cc scales, and climbing was a joy.

In fact, we struggled to find anything negative to say about the 2011 Canyon Ultimate CF SLX. It was an incredibly good bike and an absolute bargain – hence its status as the very first road.cc Bike of the Year.

If you want to see how things compare, check out Stu Kerton’s review of this year’s Canyon Ultimate CFR AXS, CFR being the highest of Canyon’s three current Ultimate levels.

Okay, this bike is way more expensive – £9,749, to be precise – and Ultimate is a disc brake-only platform these days, but Stu summed it up by saying: “Stunning performance thanks to excellent stiffness, a very low weight and a sublime ride quality,” so some things haven’t changed.

Check out loads more Bikes at Bedtime here.