Parlee unveils new Ouray 'all-road' multi-purpose bike

American carbon fibre specialists Parlee have unveiled its new Ouray all-road bike at Sea Otter 2024.

The new bike is aimed at being a multi-purpose machine, with the bike’s DNA that of a road bike capable of mixing it up and heading on to some dirt, if that’s where the ride takes you.

The new Ouray gets its name from a small Colorado town situated around 70 miles north of Durango. In talking to Parlee CEO John Harrison, he revealed that the riding in and around Ouray is a mix of asphalt mountain passes and endless ribbons of gravel roads, making it the ideal place to ride an all-road bike.

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Parlee has positioned the Ouray in between the Z-Zero RS and RZ7 road bikes, and the Z-Zero XD and Chebacco XD gravel bikes. At Sea Otter, Harrison was keen to express that the new bike certainly is a road bike that can masquerade as a light gravel bike, saying the Ouray is, "something you aren’t afraid to get dirty."

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With clearance for up to a 38mm tyre the Ouray is at home on both paved and unpaved roads

The Ouray’s frame was something the brand was incredibly keen to show off with the entire frame a monocoque construction. This has allowed the brand to really dig into the potential of the materials used.

Unlike a lot of road bikes that bond the rear triangle to the main frame of the bike, using a monocoque construction means there is no interruption of the material's desired characteristics at bonding points.

In reality, what this has allowed the engineers at Parlee to do is increase the comfort of the bike, with the Ouray a claimed 20% more compliant than any bike Parlee has previously made.

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The frame is a full monocoque design with no bonding points joining the sections of the frame together

Although Parlee does offer the Ouray with a custom paint option, the frame is also available in a nude wax-coat finish. Harrison was very proud to show off the raw carbon finish, pointing out the different sections of carbon used in the manufacturing process. Not only is the nude finish something to behold, it also goes to show the brand's confidence in the quality of the frame, with no room to hide any imperfections. The frames themselves are built in a factory in Europe, with each frame hand-built to ensure quality throughout the manufacturing process.

Across the frame size range the Ouray is not simply a copy-and-paste job with each size having a slightly different silhouette to enable a better fit for a wider range of riders. As you progress through the size range from largest to smallest the top tube begins to slope more and more to give smaller riders the necessary standover to be comfortable getting on and off the bike.

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To increase standover clearance the top tube of each frame size varies, with the smaller frames having a more aggressive slope from the head tube to the seat tube

There are no two ways about it, the Ouray is a premium bike, however a nice touch from Parlee is the ability to spec the bike to your exact preferences before the bike even ships to your local retailer. Bar width, stem length, crank length and saddle can all be specified when a bike is ordered with Parlee taking care of this before sending the bike out.

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From a tech perspective, the Ouray is bang up to date with modern trends with a T47 bottom bracket and UDH rear derailleur hanger. It also ships with a range of headset adapters to allow riders to use a range of integrated cockpits with the bike designed to be compatible with multiple brands of components.

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The raw exposed finish of the Ouray shows off the brands confidence in the manufacturing process

Available as a frame only for $5,500 or as a complete bike in a total of 12 different builds (six Shimano and six SRAM) the range-topping model with SRAM Red AXS and Zipp’s 353 NSW wheels comes in at $15,000.

What do you make of the new Ouray? Let us know in the comments section below and to keep up to date with everything from Sea Otter make sure to check out the tech news section of the GCN website.