Interbike 2010: Bianchi’s New Oltre Aero Road Bikes, Sempre Crit Racer and Cavaria Cyclocross Frame

Bianchi introduced two new road bike models at Interbike, the Oltre aero road bike and the Sempre crit racer.

Shown above, the Oltre uses aero shaping without looking out of place on a group ride, and it borrows a lot of the carbon fiber layup technology brought to market on their Infinito last year but sports a decidely firmer looking frame.

The new Sempre is designed with American crit racing in mind, reinforced and shortened for strong attacks and quick handling. They also had their recently redesigned Cavaria cyclocross bike on hand, so we snapped a few photos of it, too.

Check it all out behind the break…

The Oltre is Bianchi’s new top of the line aero road bike that the Adrioni Italian pro team will be riding in the Giro next year.  It uses X-TEC webbing fabric inside the high modulus carbon fiber tubes and carbon nano tubes within the resin.   The webbing reinforces the frame allowing them to use thinner hi-mod carbon walls, and the nano tubes fill in the fibers better than using resin alone. Together, this creates a stronger frame, important with the use of more brittle hi-mod carbon.

Despite the extra aero shaping, the carbon layup mix yields a frame that weighs in at just 930g, pretty good for a frame with aero shaping.

The aero shaping runs throughout the frame and has thin, flat seatstays to provide a bit of bump compliance.

BB30 bottom bracket, tapered steerer tube and a full carbon fork with aero wings at the top.

Internal cable routing and a shapely leading edge on the headtube round out the aero effects.

Bianchi’s U.S. importer will bring in bikes spec’d with Super Record and Dura-Ace and frameset (frame, fork and headset). There will also be a Di2 frameset available:

• $11,000 w/ Campagnolo Super Record
• $9,000 w/ Shimano Dura-Ace
• $5,000 Frameset (either version)
• Available November

Where the Infinito has Bianchi’s BAT chainstays to aid flex, the Oltre uses tall, thick stays to drive every bit of power to the rear wheel.

The all-new Sempre is made for crit racing. Its frame has shorter stays than their Infinito, and it’s reinforced around the head tube and BB to be stiff under power and solid when driving into corners.

It’ll be will be available with Shimano 105 (red) or Ultegra (blue) or Campagnolo Veloce (celeste green). If you want the complete bike in Celeste Green, you’ve gotta get the Italian group, or you can buy a frameset and build it up anyway you like…which sounds good until you see that you can get a complete 105 bike for only $400 more than the frameset.

Each of the complete bikes get their own FSA component spec with custom color matched bits to accent the frame color. The Red and Celeste frames get white rims, and the red one gets red tires and brake hoods to boot.

The downtube spreads all the way to the full width of the BB shell and gets some extra carbon here…

…and at the head tube to stiffen the frame up for racing.

The complete bikes have an alloy steerer fork, but framesets will come with a full carbon fork because that’s what the U.S. dealers are asking for. Pricing is:

• $3,000 w/ Ultegra or Veloce
• $2,300 w/ Shimano 105
• $1,900 frameset
• Available now

For 2011, the Cavaria cyclocross bike got a frame makeover, most notably with a revised top-tube shape to make shouldering easier.

As cool as this tube shaping is, it couldn’t make my camera accurately capture the beautiful Celeste color.