Gravel arcadia
Bianchi’s shapely Arcadex is sure to turn some heads
You’d be forgiven for thinking that Bianchi, as the oldest bike brand in the world, would be resolutely about road riding and nothing else. Yet the Italian brand’s range is surprisingly diverse. If you could see beneath the mud splatters you’d notice that Wout van Aert’s 2020 race-winning cyclocross bike was a Bianchi, and the company has a comprehensive range of cross-country mountain bikes too.
Bianchi is no stranger to going beyond the tarmac, but until now it hasn’t properly ventured off-road with a dedicated carbon gravel frame.
The new Arcadex addresses that.
‘We started studying the gravel world back in 2016 and released the aluminium-framed Bianchi Allroad,’ says Bianchi’s Claudio Masnata. ‘Back then we were the first to deliver a gravel bike with a dropper seatpost.’ It was a radical spec choice on an otherwise fairly reserved bike, which had post-mount disc brakes, 35mm tyre clearance and quick-release dropouts. While Bianchi has maintained a presence in gravel since then with its Impulso Allroad, the Arcadex is the two-footed plunge to previous Bianchi gravel bikes’ dipped toe.
‘It is gravel in the Bianchi way,’ says Masnata. ‘Racing DNA blended with modern trends, a bike that can be raced on just as easily as taken on multi-day bikepacking expeditions.’
Sure enough the Arcadex has plenty of features suited to long-haul rides, such as buckets of tyre clearance (42mm in 700c, 47mm in 650b), 1x gearing as standard and an assortment of mounting options. Those bikepacking attributes rub shoulders with racier characteristics such as the provision to swap to two chainrings if desired and the fairly extreme, oversized tubing of a race bike.
‘The peculiar shape of the frame follows the function,’ says Masnata. ‘The head tube and fork are oversized because we wanted a very stiff front end and we needed room for integrated cabling. The bottom bracket junction uses much the same rationale. Its tube sections are huge for the best pedalling efficiency.’
The frameset also takes aerodynamics into account, with extended flaps at the bottom of the already deep-section fork legs, a kamm-tail seat tube, dropped seatstays and FSA’S ACR headset system. The ACR system is a ready-made thirdparty solution to hiding cables inside the frame that Bianchi already uses on its road bikes. Even so, it would be fair to say the Arcadex stands out among even the most characterful designs around today. There’s an unusual reason as to why, and features such as the blanked-off port on top of the bottom bracket junction provide clues as to what it might be.
‘The Arcadex frame is compatible with an intelligent adaptive suspension system,’ says Masnata. ‘The charging port will be located on the top face of the BB. In the very near future we will have an e-arcadex. We designed this frame to work without the system as well as with it, so the big bottom bracket works just as well for pedalling efficiency as it does for housing the integrated battery and the charging port of the motor unit.’
Not just for speed
For all Bianchi’s talk of raciness this and efficiency that, Masnata says that, just as in its road bikes, Bianchi recognises the importance of comfort in the control and practicality of the Arcadex.
‘Comfort is always important and is part of the overall performance. The compatibility with largevolume tyres provides comfort as well as extra grip. We designed the frame and made some component decisions to smooth the ride too. The frame triangles are compact to expose more seatpost for flex, the 16° flared handlebar aims to improve control over rough ground, while the 0° stem
[stems are more typically -6°] raises the front end to reduce the stress on the rider’s neck and back.’
That last decision is a smart move as it can have a big impact on the ride position but equally can be easily swapped if the rider wants or needs to alter their position towards something more aggressive.
It could be said that Bianchi’s modest offering in the growing gravel market up until now was perhaps the brand showing its age. From a different perspective, watching, learning and waiting until now to produce a daring, original take on the gravel bike could be viewed as a brand displaying the wisdom of its 136 years. We’ll decide whether Bianchi’s bold new approach to gravel has paid off in a review soon.
‘It is gravel in the Bianchi way. It can be raced on just as easily as taken on bikepacking expeditions’