First Ride: Colnago C68 Gravel

Colnago has just announced its first gravel bike to be handcrafted in Italy, the C68 Gravel. Si Richardson was lucky enough to get his hands on one ahead of the launch for a closer look and to find out if this new bike could live up to the C68 name.

According to Colnago, this bike has not been designed to be the fastest, lightest or most capable on gravel. Instead, they went for a far more ambiguous but no less ambitious aim of making the C68 the 'best gravel bike' out there.

• Read more: Colnago’s iconic C series gets the gravel treatment with the C68 Gravel

What could the best gravel bike even mean?

One of the main points with gravel riding is that it's a discipline that resists definition. The term gravel riding can mean so many different things to different riders. For some, it could spark images of multi-day bikepacking epics venturing far from paved roads. For others, it could involve pinning a race number on and focusing on getting aero and power data.

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Colnago have designed this bike to be 'the best' in rider feel and experience rather than the more typical metrics we are used to seeing

For those within the gravel riding community, gravel riding can mean whatever you want it to mean and it can hold a different meaning from day to day – which is part of the charm. As great as this is, it does make Colnago’s claim of making the best gravel bike hard to pin down and define as a metric.

• Read more: 6 key differences between gravel bikes and road bikes

Si managed to get some time with the head of engineering at Colnago, Davide Fumigalli to find out just what the team was aiming for with this bike to be characterised as the best. In Fumigalli’s eyes, the C68 Gravel is a bike for people who enjoy the process more than the goal. Ultimately this means the C68 has been designed to be the best to ride, in how it feels rather than how it performs. With this being said Fumigalli does believe that a bike should feel fast to be the best, making this characteristic high up on the designer's priority list.

What does the C68 name stand for?

Colnago has a wide range of bikes, however, it is the C series of bikes that retain some of the original heritage of the brand. All bikes that are part of the C series are manufactured and assembled in Colnago’s Italian factory using the same process of tubes glued into lugs that the brand is known for.

• Read more: Motoki Yoshio x Colnago matte C68 up for auction with expected price tag of at least $25,000

The C series of bikes was born back in 1989 with the C35, a bike designed in collaboration with Ferrari. Next in the C family was the C40, which marked the brand's first production carbon fibre bike. From this point moving forward the subsequent models, the C50, C59, C60 and C64 all began to transition away from the C series’ original racing roots.

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Colnago's C series of bikes uses a more traditional construction method than monocoque frames, instead opting for a lugged tube approach

With the introduction of the monocoque V series of bikes that were faster, lighter and more specific to the demands of modern racing, the C series was given space to follow a different path. Since this point, the C series of bikes has been aimed more at creating bikes for the simple pleasure of riding and making bikes that feel great to ride.

The third C68

The C68 Gravel is the third member of the C68 family, joining the C68 and the C68 Allroad. The C68 road bike was initially launched in 2022, however, due to the demand for the bike upon launch the Italian factory could not produce the other two models and so staggered their release.

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The C68 family includes the road bike and an allroad version and now the gravel bike, all of which have their own ride characteristics

Much like the other C68 models and all of the C series bikes that have come before them, the C68 Gravel uses a modular construction technique. This means that the frame is manufactured in six different parts that are then bonded together using lugs. Colnago says that by doing this it allows for greater production control throughout the manufacturing process. Making smaller, less complex parts allows them to be made with greater consistency and overall tighter tolerances.

• Read more: Nathan Haas’ Colnago G3-X: UCI Gravel World Championships bike check

Using this construction method doesn’t come cheap though. Every tube is bespoke to each frame size meaning that each tube has needed its own testing and development to define the ride characteristics that Colnago was aiming for. This extends to the rest of the range as well with the C68 Gravel sharing no frame parts with the other C68 models.

42mm tyre clearance

It might come as a surprise that the C68 Gravel has fairly modest tyre clearance as far as modern gravel bikes go. The frame and fork are officially only certified for use with a maximum tyre width of 42mm. This is certainly generous enough to accommodate a wide range of typical gravel tyres, however, it is somewhat restricted when compared to other gravel bikes offering 50mm of clearance and above.

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The bike by modern standards has a modest 42mm tyre clearance in order to achieve the characteristics the brand wanted from the bike

The reason behind this is that Colnago felt that increasing the tyre clearances any further would compromise the handling and performance characteristics of the bike.

• Read more: How to choose the right tyres for your gravel bike

How does the bike feel to ride?

Although we do not do product reviews here at GCN, with a bike built with the concept of feel at its core it would be remiss not to discuss how the bike feels. Even though Si didn’t get all that much time on the bike he did find that for a bike that has nothing radical going on when you study the geometry chart it managed to feel ‘right’ however and wherever you ride it.

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Something that Si was hot to point out was that the frame was eerily quiet and seemed to damp out a lot of the surface noise

He also noted how quiet the bike was out on the gravel. Typically carbon fibre bikes can be fairly loud and reverberate a lot of surface noise due to their large open voids and the rigidity of the material. The C68 Gravel seemed to dampen the surface noise creating a silent almost ghost-like ride which, for Si at least, is no bad thing.

With all of this being said there is the small matter of the price. The entry point to this range is the 1x mechanical Shimano GRX822 equipped model that costs $7995.95 / €7250.00 / £6,899.95 and the top-spec SRAM Red equipped bike retailing for $13,199.95 / €12,010.00 / £11,099.99.99 putting this bike firmly in the superbike category.

Who are we to say if the C68 Gravel really is ‘the best’ gravel bike, but we would love to hear your thoughts on the new bike in the comments section below.

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