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A gravel bike it’s not, but the new Colnago C68 Allroad riffs off the performance-oriented C68 road bike to create something more ready for dirt roads and cobbles. Bigger tire clearance and relaxed geometry are the keys, but it’s still a performance bike like every Colnago.
It’s handmade in Italy using the same process and design as the road bike, including the blend of smooth joints and lug-like overwraps. These give it Colnago’s distinctive look, albeit in more subdued fashion than some other models.
Up front, it keeps the tightly integrated bar and stem, with full internal cable routing feeding past the CeramicSpeed solid lube headset and a D-shaped steerer tube — same as the C68 Road.
It has a slightly raised head tube for a 19mm higher stack height. That combines with 3.5mm shorter reach to put you in a more upright riding position, improving comfort on longer rides and rougher surfaces.
The fork gets 7mm more rake, which reduces trail, but Colnago says with the larger tires, the effective values are very similar to the road bike. Combined with a slightly lower BB to offset the increased tire height, it has similar handling to the C68 Road.
From there, the downtube is reshaped with an octagonal forward section that shifts to a rounded square lower half more similar to the road version. This, combined with reinforced stays, makes the bike a bit tougher for the intended use.
The seat angle carries over unchanged, with the seat tube holding its D-shaped seatpost.
Chainstays have more room between them to bump tire clearance to 700×35, up from 700×32 for the Road model.
The top model gets Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 & C50 wheels, Colnago’s integrated handlebar-stem, a Prologo saddle, and Pirelli P ZERO Race TLR 700×30 tires for €15,335.
Other builds offer various high-end Shimano, SRAM, and Campagnolo groups (all electronic, it’s not compatible with mechanical shifting) and wheels from ENVE, Campy, Shimano, and Fulcrum.
All bikes come with an NFC chip embedded in the frame, which conveys technical info through its app. This “digital passport” helps prove ownership, storing all of the bike’s data and ownership information in the blockchain.
Colnago’s C-series are its all-around performance bikes. If you want a faster, racier “all road” bike, its recent V4R is worth a look too. And if you want a pure gravel bike, that’s the Colnago G3-X.