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TECH NEWS

De Rosa 2013: Carbon, titanium, steel, style… & substance

Featuring the Protos range-topper + brand new 888 Superking, and plenty more Italian loveliness

Italy’s De Rosa have some of the classiest looking bikes out there and their Eurobike stand, featuring the brand new 888 Superking, was dripping with style. 

Eurobike might have finished over a fortnight ago but the place is so vast that we still have plenty of pictures and news that we’ve not yet had the chance to share with you. We have, though, already shown you the 888 Superking (main pic), one version of which comes with the Campagnolo EPS battery hidden inside the frame. Superking still sounds like a packet of fags to us but you can't argue with those looks. Framesets are priced from £2,799.99 to £2,999.99.

The Protos is another new bike. Well, it was launched back in January and we first caught site of it at the Core Bike Show early in the year.

This is De Rosa’s top-end road race frame that’s made from three different types of high-quality carbon fibre. Featuring a tapered head tube and a press-fit bottom bracket, that frame weighs less than 800g.

Oh, there is one stumbling block: a full bike built up with a Campag Super Record EPS groupset is… cough!... 12 grand. Still, it does look incredibly pretty. That price does include an Elite De Rosa carbon bottle cage, by the way, so it’s not all bad.

The Titanio 3/2.5 is made from 3Al/2.5V titanium – the clues are all in the name. That’s the titanium alloy most often used in the bike industry.

The head tube is CNC machined and so are the dropouts. You’re looking at £2,849.99 for the frame and fork.

This one is the Team which is aluminium with a carbon-fibre fork. That’s an oversized head tube up front.

And next up we get the Corum which is made from 18MCDV6 steel. De Rosa are certainly an equal opportunities bike builder; so far we’ve had carbon, titanium, aluminium and steel. We can’t see them going with bamboo for the full set.

The Merak is another of De Rosa’s stunning-looking carbon road bikes. This version comes with a Shimano Ultegra Di2 groupset and FSA cockpit components.

The carbon King RS comes with a BB30 bottom bracket, tapered head tube, an integrated seatpost, and internal cables. That’s new 9000 Series Shimano Dura-Ace on this model.

The Scattofisso is a singlespeed built around a track bike geometry although it’s also intended for urban use. This frame is titanium and it’s also available in TIG-welded steel.

De Rosa’s Milanino bikes come in various different guises. This is the Free Pop version with a triple-butted cromo steel frame and a belt drive system rather than a chain.

The Tonica is belt drive too, with a Shimano Alfine 8-speed internal gear hub so maintenance should be minimal. It’s built around a triple-butted 6061 aluminium frame and those are Shimano’s M595 cable-operated disc brakes.

This is the Vintage model. It’s triple-butted 6061 alloy singlespeed with disc brakes and an eccentric bottom bracket.

De Rosa’s UK importer is i-ride. Go to their website for more details.

Mat has been in cycling media since 1996, on titles including BikeRadar, Total Bike, Total Mountain Bike, What Mountain Bike and Mountain Biking UK, and he has been editor of 220 Triathlon and Cycling Plus. Mat has been road.cc technical editor for over a decade, testing bikes, fettling the latest kit, and trying out the most up-to-the-minute clothing. He has won his category in Ironman UK 70.3 and finished on the podium in both marathons he has run. Mat is a Cambridge graduate who did a post-grad in magazine journalism, and he is a winner of the Cycling Media Award for Specialist Online Writer. Now over 50, he's riding road and gravel bikes most days for fun and fitness rather than training for competitions.

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7 comments

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notfastenough | 12 years ago
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Stunning stuff. Loving the blinding yellow and the crazy green.

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CapriciousZephyr | 12 years ago
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I'm very rarely moved to post, but, as has already been observed, the Team is simply beautiful.

Hooray for a manufacturer demonstrating the effectiveness of a nice paint job and nothing more than a couple of decals. I despair when I see otherwise pretty bikes covered in decals. I don't need to be reminded of the manufacturer's name on every single tube of the bike, and certainly not on the outside _and inside_ of fork legs, etc. Although my old 1995 Cannondale R500 is far outclassed by modern bikes, I still think it looks great with little more than a big "Cannondale" decal on the (massive) downtube to distract from the "Wild Orchid fade to Mako Blue" metallic paint job. Even at the time, that was far from a top-of-the-range bike, but the paint job puts the vast majority of current bikes to shame.

I get the impression that bikes are starting to look a bit "cleaner" again. I hope it's true; it was really bugging me a couple of years ago!

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bobinski | 12 years ago
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I too would take every one of those bikes but the look and colour of the team, it is just plain gorgeous...

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Jezzag | 12 years ago
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Is the Team the same as the UK Milanino you reviewed a short while back. Frame geometry and components look very close according to the De Rosa site.

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alotronic | 12 years ago
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If I were a rich man... I'd have one of each of all the models, what a range.

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Ducci | 12 years ago
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And did you point out the typo decals on the Merak to the nice people on the stand?  3

I'd be happy to take one off theirs hands as a 'second'.

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Tony Farrelly replied to Ducci | 12 years ago
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Ducci wrote:

And did you point out the typo decals on the Merak to the nice people on the stand?  3

I'd be happy to take one off theirs hands as a 'second'.

Joint the queue.

I took that pic and to be honest I didn't have the bottle or heart to point it out, they are very, very passionate about their bikes at De Rosa. I once saw some hapless De Rosa fella get a right telling off for referring to one of the bikes as the 'cheaper' version - De Rosa don't do 'cheap' as he was forcefully reminded.

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