SPECIALIZED SEQUOIA ELITE
£1500 › The return of an old Specialized name in a new gravel bike guise
Like Cannondale, Specialized is now probably best known for its high-end exotica – and for its attempts to achieve worldwide cycling ubiquity – but its original sport-tourer Sequoia dates back to 1981. The 2017 incarnation is a very different beast. Down-tube shifters have long since vanished, and sidepull brakes have been supplanted by hydraulic discs. But it’s still essentially a ‘sports-tourer’, albeit in a more modern gravel bike-inspired design. And it’s made from good ’ol chromoly, so some things never change – though we doubt ’81-era Spesh would have released a bike in ‘California white sage’. Or very pale green to the rest of us…
The Sequoia’s contact points are comfortable, and they’re colour coordinated too – a sort of charcoal black pairing. But the canvas tape and the canvas-feel saddle finish looked much the worse for wear after one very muddy ride, and neither is as easy to clean as traditional bar tape or saddle.
There’s no doubting that the Sequoia’s braking is head and shoulders above the rest, as your extra half a grand contributes to Shimano hydraulic disc braking (the entry-level £950 Sequoia has pretty much the same kit as most of the bikes here, pairing Sora and Tektro Spyre brakes). The thru-axles also contribute to the quality braking.
The downside of the groupset is the shape of the 105 hydraulic levers, which have a pronounced bump you feel under the inside of your thumb when you’re on the hoods. That said, as you’d expect for the price and given its reputation, the 105 gearing is superior to anything else here save for perhaps the Raleigh’s SRAM 1x11 setup. The 48x32 FSA chainset is familiar from the Trek, though it makes a little more of it by going for a 36T sprocket, lowering the bottom gear a fraction, but it’s still higher