CURVE GXR:
Best Titanium All-Rounder + Canyon Lux CF SL 8.0, Scott Foil 10 Disc Di2
GGravel riding is no longer a niche pastime for bearded guys with ironic arm tattoos.
It’s a massive part of cycling worldwide, and it’s infiltrating normal road riding more and more. Many riders are even ditching their road bikes completely – in favour of a single drop-bar bike that you can still use for the annual CT Cycle Tour, but also for exploring tame singletrack, greenbelt detours, and South Africa’s thousands of kilometres of dirt roads.
Curve is an Aussie company, and they also know a thing or two about dirt roads. Their GXR is the perfect ‘one bike to rule them all’. They’ve taken the fun of a CX bike, thrown in some adventure features, and created a do-anything machine to take you anywhere.
The frame is made from titanium, which costs a packet but is indestructible, lightweight and should last a lifetime. The geometry is right in the middle between adventure tourer and road racer.
The wheelbase is a little longer than on a standard endurance road bike, and the BB is a little taller, to create more space for frame bags and 1-litre water bottles. The bike’s designed for a shorter stem and wider drop bars, to maximise comfort over silly distances, and to ensure predictable handling when the road gets loose and rough.
Despite all this, it’s still racy enough not to slow you down on a Sunday tarmac loop with your mates. There are rear rack mounts, three bottle-cage mounts on the frame, and a further three mounting points on each side
of the carbon fork. All of this means you can just as easily load up and set off into the sunset on a cross-country bikepacking mission.
Unloaded, the build featured weighs a piffling 9kg, with carbon rims and a SRAM ▶orce 1 1x11 mechanical groupset. Get the price down with Curve’s alloy rims, or ramp it up even further with a bonkers-brilliant ‘▶-▲agle’ wireless AXS 1x12 group.
Curve’s ambassador on this side of the Indian Ocean is well-known endurance rider Kevin Benkenstein. He’s hammered the GXR – and other Curve bikes – all over the country and in the mountains of Lesotho, and they haven’t put a foot wrong. If the GXR can handle’s Kevin’s riding, it can handle all of your potential adventures. As he puts it, the GXR “will take you anywhere your mind can wander”.
Much of the versatility comes from the frame’s ability to fit 700c or 650b wheels, with clearance for up to 2.2” tyres on the smaller rims. This is largely thanks to a custom steel chainstay yoke that frees up space around the bottom bracket, and which also stiffens the BB area under load to avoid frame flex. (Nice touch: it’s engraved with ‘RAC▲ RID▲ S▲▲K’ on the drive side, which basically sums up the bike.)
The frame finish is beautiful, droolinducing raw titanium, with the only real embellishment being a metal head badge featuring Curve’s cheeky cockatoo mascot.
It’s understated, tough as they come, lightweight, and it can go anywhere. What more do you want from a road bike?