I had the same experience when shopping for a gravel bike in 2018-2019. It turns out that there are a lot of road bike companies out there, like, 100s that I hadn't heard of, and they're all making basically identical bikes. When it comes to the bigger sizes every.single.company did it the same way: same rear center, very short reach/TT (by any standard), and a slacker seat tube angle than the smaller sizes (presumably because long femurs?). Every single company at the time did it exactly the same way. And these bikes sucked for all those reasons.
So I got one custom made. Road bikes are optimized for the middle sizes then they extrapolate out and then at the extremes of XS and XXL they tend to make half-steps. So I optimized my geometry for what _I thought it should be_, 50 years of road bike designers be damned. Clearly they don't know anything about big strong guys. Have you seen how Rapha gear fits?
And I was right. I still ride that bike today. Six years later Santa Cruz arrived at the exact same geometry for its XXL Stigmata along with the XXL Canyon Grizl. The traditionalists can suck it.
Feb. 12, 2025, 7:17 a.m. - Cr4w
I had the same experience when shopping for a gravel bike in 2018-2019. It turns out that there are a lot of road bike companies out there, like, 100s that I hadn't heard of, and they're all making basically identical bikes. When it comes to the bigger sizes every.single.company did it the same way: same rear center, very short reach/TT (by any standard), and a slacker seat tube angle than the smaller sizes (presumably because long femurs?). Every single company at the time did it exactly the same way. And these bikes sucked for all those reasons. So I got one custom made. Road bikes are optimized for the middle sizes then they extrapolate out and then at the extremes of XS and XXL they tend to make half-steps. So I optimized my geometry for what _I thought it should be_, 50 years of road bike designers be damned. Clearly they don't know anything about big strong guys. Have you seen how Rapha gear fits? And I was right. I still ride that bike today. Six years later Santa Cruz arrived at the exact same geometry for its XXL Stigmata along with the XXL Canyon Grizl. The traditionalists can suck it.