ARC8 Escapee
€1990( FRAME SET ), COMPLETE BIKE EST .£5754 A NEW AERO" ENDURANCE MACHINE
ARC8 is the brainchild of Swiss engineer Jonas Mueller in partnership with long-time friend Serafin Pazdera. While at BMC Mueller was behind bikes such as our 2015 Bike of the Year, GF01.
ARC8 presently only sells framesets so you can individualise the specification with your ARC8 dealer. We asked ARC8 to build ours using Ultegra Di2 to keep the price down – compared with Dura-Ace or SRAM Red – while still delivering a superbike performance. Shifting is accurate, and the braking, with its Ice-Tech rotors, proved consistent whatever the weather. The 50/34, 11-32 gearing is more endurance than race bike, but it suits the Escapee’s nature well.
Lightweight integration
The Escapee DB is an aero-optimised race bike that, like many of its competitors’ bikes, has brought cable integration to the fore. ARC8’s design allows the chassis to hit the low weight that was one of Mueller’s aims. The claimed 810g and 325g fork weights mean you could build the Escapee into a seriously light machine – lighter still if you go for the rim-braked Escapee.
Unlike BMC’s bikes, ARC8’s Escapee eschews dropped seatstays and has stayed with a diamond frame, which Mueller says creates a better sprinting response than dropped seatstays. He also says you can build in the compliance you’d get from dropped seatstays by manipulating frame tubes. The Escapee’s seat tube has a rearwheel cutout that keeps the wheelbase tight, improves aerodynamics and, by flattening the tube, ARC8 has created some compliance to bring comfort to the stiff-race-bike party.
Drag-reducing act
The brief for designing the fork was to maximise aerodynamics. This has resulted in fork legs with a rounded front edge and a truncated kammtail rear. ARC8 says this maintains the torsional stiffness you need for controlled handling better than the design of earlier aero forks. It does a good job of smoothing road vibrations too.
Mueller’s team looked for aerodynamic benefits elsewhere. The ICH stem has a clamp
The ARC8 feels swift. The bottom bracket stiffness is ideal for getting power down and the steering response is fast, not flighty
7.5kg OV ER A LL W EIGH T. YOU COULD GO LOWER WITH RIM BRAKES OR HIGHER" SPEC KIT
184g THE WEIGHT OF THE ARC8’S COMFORTABLE CARBON SEATPOST
with no forward-facing bolts, which add drag. The Escapee’s cables and hoses are routed through the bar, stem and head tube for a clean and aerodynamic look.
High rollers?
The Escapee rolls on ARC8’s patented tubelessready C38 DB wheels. These have a 38mm aero profile rim with a 26mm external width and a 19mm internal width optimised for 25-28mm tyres. These are paired with DT Swiss’s longlasting 350 hubs for a wheelset that costs 999.
The lightweight rims add to the Escapee’s excellent climbing credentials, but in some challenging conditions the front rim got pushed and pulled. Wolfpack’s Race Cotton 26mm clinchers are light at 233g each and their tanwalls look superb. Their slick rubber does look like it might be a handful in late winter damp, but the opposite is true. The cotton casing is supple and the rubber so tacky the Wolfpacks feel surefooted and compliant.
Race credentials
The Escapee’s geometry is unashamedly racy, its 560mm stack and 393mm reach making it a little lower and shorter than Specialized’s Tarmac SL7. The 110mm stem gave a low position but one that didn’t feel overstretched. The steep 73.5-degree seat angle is all about power transfer, while the 72-degree head angle is also pretty quick.
On the road the ARC8 feels swift. The bottom bracket stiffness is ideal for getting your power down, the steering response is fast but not flighty and I could pick a line through technical corners on descents knowing the ARC8 would handle it perfectly. If a quick correction was needed to counter a pothole, the Escapee took it in its stride.
I was impressed by just how good it feels. Its handling is equal to the Giant TCR. It has a ride quality that I could easily live with: at home on epic all-day rides and speedier hour-long blasts. It’s also such a rewarding climber that I found myself looking for more challenging ascents.
Rough with the smooth
Stiff, lightweight road bikes often fall down on comfort but the Escapee scores well. Aided by the tyres, the traditional rear end and carbon post work well, smoothing surfaces. But, the Escapee was let down by its saddle. The Monza had a profile I found very hard to settle on. My other niggle is the stem. The design holds the handlebar securely, but the cable routing isn’t compatible with an out-front computer mount.