CARRERA VIRAG0
Super-budget carbon road bike
Acarbon frame and tapered fullcarbon fork. For £800. And you can buy it from a real bike shop. Carrera’s TDF has been the first road bike for thousands of British cyclists and is still a familiar sight. But a carbon bike at this price. Surely something’s got to give? Actually, much less than you might think.
I spoke with Carrera’s head of design, Justin Stevenson, who told us the new frame was developed specifically for this model. “It’s made in Asia with one of our key partners to ensure optimum performance for cost. We really wanted to bring carbon frames to a new price point and customer but were determined not to compromise the frame, ride quality or weight. We also wanted to make sure this frame was good enough to upgrade to better components at a later date.”
Justin also tells me the Virago was designed from the very beginning with modern features such as thin, dropped seatstays and “a profiled top tube to allow vertical compliance over rougher roads”.
I first tested the Virago last year when I put in more days on it than its competitors to ensure I hadn’t missed anything. The result? This Carrera is much better than I expected.
Its modern frame profiles really do result in a comfortable and, yes, (and this is a major boon in bike designer terms) compliant ride. The angular frame with its oversized trapezium-shaped down tube is stiff but that flattened top tube and those dropped stays keep things comfortable however hard you ride. The tapered fork and head tube also deliver great control when you crank things up, no slop, no play, just confident power transfer.
The Virago’s top tube is reasonably short, so you’re not overly stretched, but steep frame angles and a sub-metre wheelbase ensure quick, lively handling, although it’s not too twitchy for the novice road rider likely to be looking at this bike.
The weight is okay for the price and although you will feel its 9.71kg when climbing, the Virago’s 34x32 bottom gear helped me on my local Mendip climbs. Yes, there will be bigger gear jumps with a 32 or 34t sprocket, but for me that’s a trade-off worth making.
Get down into the drops and it’s a confident descender too, although I’d upgrade to cartridge brake blocks to make the most of the Tektro caliper rim brakes.
Shimano’s 9-speed Sora groupset is a solid performer; I did have a very occasional glitch with some less-than-precise shifting so the chain felt as if it wasn’t sitting in the cassette perfectly every time. It was a slight annoyance but not enough to detract from the overall quality of the ride. It may be a result of the Virago’s internal cable routing and could be improved by upgrading to a Shimano outer gear cable.
The rest of the kit is the usual functional aluminium stem, bar and 27.2mm seatpost and I had no complaints about the Velo saddle. The 32-spoke wheels are basic and the same is true for the 25mm Zaffiro tyres so when they wear out, I’d upgrade to suppler 28mm tyres for their comfortboosting volume. Given that there is clearance for these wider tyres I’d like to have seen them fitted as standard.
This may not be the most elegant-looking bike and you may also have to overcome prejudice about buying from Halfords – but you’ll nab yourself a stone-cold bargain if you do. In decades spent testing hundreds of bikes from £200 to £10,000, few have surprised me more than this.
It’s big in the right areas and slim and forgiving where it needs to be. Carrera’s Virago is a practical day-to-day bike that’s also suitable for longer days out, and it not only comes with a lifetime of safety checks but the frame and fork are guaranteed for life. At the time of writing, it’s down in price to £700, making it even more of a bargain. What’s not to like?
“The Virago’s modern frame profiles really do result in a comfortable and compliant ride”