Centurion apparently has strong cyclocross ties rooted in the racing career of its founder Wolfgang Renner, and their focus shows in the development of this carbon cross prototype which is expected to be available for cross season a year from now. They have a carry-over aluminum cross range available now, but our readers outside of the German-speaking markets of Centurion can still drool over this nice looking bike from what is a typically affordable company and a development partner with the much bigger Merida.
Read on for a bunch of detail images of the Crossdrive prototype, plus a nice line of disc road bikes that are available now…
The Crossdrive will return as a 2016 model with this carbon disc frame. It uses 100x15mm front and 142x12mm rear thru-axles with 160mm rotors front and rear. And yes those are thru-axle disc-brake cyclocross wheels from what looked like Lightweight marked prototype. We asked Lightweight about them, and they confirmed what we can see and nothing else, so it looks like we will have to keep an eye open for them in the near future.
This prototype sports hidden/removable fender mounts. Centurion is a practical brand so we aren’t sure what to think. We assume that these are hold-overs from the Gigadrive frame (see below) that most likely shared some development molds with this cross project bike, but they are on the carbon endurance bike, so might make it onto the carbon cross bike too. Internal mechanical or electronic shift and hydraulic brake line routing is accomplished with a removable access cover under the bottom bracket.
It looks like a nice anti-chainsuck guard will probably make it on to the final bike to protect the carbon frame from dropped chains, even if that is a bit of a thing of the past with SRAM CX1. Target weight is expected to be about 7.2kg, before mud is applied.
Centurion does carry over a three level disc-brake Cyclo Cross model with a butted aluminum frame and builds from a €950 Tiagra up to an €1800 mechanical Ultegra. Not to be ignored is the deep carbon-framed disc-brake Gigadrive Disc and aluminum Hyperdrive Disc endurance road bike lines that while mostly a carry over from the 2014 line, do expand a bit and now include spec up to Ultegra Di2. A lot of the aesthetic that you see in the Crossdrive prototype above is very clearly already going to be available this year.
