TREK MADONE SLR 9.0 DISC £10,000

THE LATEST EVOLUTION OF TREK’ S FLAG SHIP AERO BIKE

“ALL THE SPEED, SHARPNESS AND HANDLING WE’D EVER WANT FROM A PRO LEVEL BIKE BUT WITH ENDURANCE BIKE LEVELS OF COMFORT”

Before we get into the nitty gritty of the Madone’s phenomenal quality let’s just look at that price tag, yes, that’s right, it’s five figures. For the same (or less) you could buy a new Ducati Scrambler, Kawasaki Z900RS, or a car like the Smart Fortwo, if you opt for used, how about a 2005 Maserati Quattroporte, or 2007 Porsche Boxster. Yes, the Madone SLR 9 is a serious amount of money, but it’s a serious amount of bike.

As soon as you start pedalling the SLR it becomes apparent that this is something special, the pick-up is instantaneous and the acceleration is everything you’d expect from a superbike. The equipment it’s packing is superb with the Aeolus XXX 6 wheels a star of the show. They are shod with Bontrager’s equally impressive R4 tyres with their super-supple 320TPI casing.

Trek has also managed to hit the high mark with the drivetrain. Shimano’s latest Dura-Ace Di2 is brilliant, the gear shifts slick and accurate and the brake feel is exactly what you want from a disc system: powerful yet precise.

The Madone’s geometry is, as you’d expect, very much race bike stuff. This, combined with the adjustable IsoSpeed – which allows you to customise the compliance to suit the terrain – makes it a ridiculously smooth ride. The Madone fills you with such confidence, it will no doubt make you a faster rider.

Forgetting the price tag for a moment, the SLR is a monumentally capable machine: all the speed, sharpness and handling you could ever want from a pro-level bike but with endurance-bike levels of comfort, and for that it deserves five stars, all day every day.

But for £10k we want absolute perfection. The Montrose saddle is comfortable enough, but we couldn’t help thinking that the SLR would benefit from a short saddle as found on aero bikes from Cervélo, Cannondale and Specialized. We’d also like to see Shimano’s BW-WU111 wireless antenna in the Di2 setup, which allows the use of its E-tube project app so you can customise the Di2 operation to work with a Garmin and enable the hidden buttons in the top of the hoods – although the Trek dealer you’ve just given £10k to should be happy to make these changes for you.