One of the most interesting parts of touring bike manufacturers’ premises is the collections of bike which were cutting edge in their day, that they often have stashed away in a back room somewhere.
Toe clips and straps ruled before Look's clipless pedals
Look’s factory in Nevers, in central France, is a prime example. Look has been at the cutting edge of bike design ever since it moved from ski bindings into bicycle components and frames, back in the 1980s.
The KG86 had carbon/kevlar tubes bonded to aluminium lugs
Bernard Hinault won the Tour de France back in 1985 using Look’s revolutionary clipless pedals and Greg Lemond won the 1986 Tour on Look’s KG86 carbon frame. We found a KG86 complete with Look’s original composite clipless pedals leaning against a wall in a room full of old machines in one of Look’s offices.
There's a round titanium tubeset under all those fairings
Before the UCI put the spoilers on bike design with its 3:1 tube profile and non-structural components rules, there were some increasingly radical machines being built. Look’s 1997 KG296 CLM was made of titanium and developed especially for the time trialist Alex Zulle. The frame was actually made of round tubes but with added titanium fairings to improve aerodynamics. Wheels were either 650c or 600c and the frontal cross-section was only 28mm.
Look's engineers worked on aerodynamic designs from 1994 onwards
An earlier aero design from Look was this 1994 track bike, which was ridden to the French national championship by Philippe Ermenault. Look’s engineers worked with the French national coach and an aerodynamics expert to develop the bike. It won the 1994 national championship on its first outing.
Paul started writing for Cycling Weekly in 2015, covering cycling tech, new bikes and product testing. Since then, he’s reviewed hundreds of bikes and thousands of other pieces of cycling equipment for the magazine and the Cycling Weekly website.
He’s been cycling for a lot longer than that though and his travels by bike have taken him all around Europe and to California. He’s been riding gravel since before gravel bikes existed too, riding a cyclocross bike through the Chilterns and along the South Downs.
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