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Eurobike 2015 colour trends: MY EYES!

You did want a neon road bike, right? Right?

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it", said George Santayana. And the people who designed this year's crop of bikes clearly don't remember the 80s. 

Enduro is to blame for this. Mountain bikes have led the way into the neon wonderland, and like dutiful sheep us roadies are following, possibly to our doom. Or at least, to a place ten years down the line where we look at our riding photos and cringe a bit.

Anyway, it looks like you'll get some bright on your bike for the next couple of years. Some people, like Scott, are mostly using the neon as a highlight colour in greater or lesser quantities...

Whereas others are just jumping in with both feet. There's an old saying about blue and green, how does it go?

KTM have been making bright orange bikes for ages, it's their corporate colour. So naturally they're embracing the new trend like a long-lost uncle.

Cube could have rested on their laurels too, since neon highlights has been their thing for a couple of years. But no, they're pushing the envelope this year. This Axial C:62 Disc is, erm, bold.

We didn't know we needed fluorescent green wheel graphics until now.

It's a difficult look to pull off, the full garish. By way of an example of how it can go wrong, let's look at two broadly similarly-coloured bikes. Here's the Santa Cruz CC CX1, in bright orange, with green and blue highlights:

...which is nice. And here's a Haibike crosser in bright orange, with green and blue highlights...

...which isn't.

The Italians are undecided about neon, although they seem fairly happy that bright colours are back.

This is the new Cipollini NK1K, which is fully on-trend in neon orange and black...

...although we're not sure these wheels are on trend. Perhaps they're ahead of the game.

Wilier have embraced bright with this GTR SL, although we'rekind of left wishing they hadn't. The black and neon green one behind is a lot more subtle. That's where we've come to: the black and neon green one is the subtle one.

Carrera made a better job of their new AR01 in classy red. More on this bike later in the week.

It's such a ubiquitous trend that even people like THM Carbones, who so far as we're aware have never before made anything that's not black, had a fluo-highlighted prototype flat mount disc fork.

Accessories aren't safe either. This is what your helmet will look like next year:

It's an assault on the eyes alright. We had to go and look at the Wanderer stand for half an hour to calm down.

Of course, if you're not happy with the colours then you can always spec your own.

Ridley have introduced a Customizer system so you can spec your own colours to match your car, or your favourite kit. Although of course, you can guess what colour they used to demonstrate it...

Dave is a founding father of road.cc, having previously worked on Cycling Plus and What Mountain Bike magazines back in the day. He also writes about e-bikes for our sister publication ebiketips. He's won three mountain bike bog snorkelling World Championships, and races at the back of the third cats.

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15 comments

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alsothings | 8 years ago
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As someone who had been cycling around in a near 20 year old fondriest with an epic red to blue/green to white paint job for the last couple years, I'm really happy that new model carbon might finally be able to keep up. So bored of BoB.

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Mayhem SWE | 8 years ago
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Santa Cruz always seem to come up with loud yet great looking color schemes. The others cover the whole spectrum from quite nice to quite hideous…

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Dnnnnnn | 8 years ago
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Bring back the Team Banana!

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Accessibility f... | 8 years ago
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They still have a way to go before they get to the garish levels achieved by a 1990 Lemond frame, with colours I lusted over (but couldn't afford) while a student.

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Ginsterdrz | 8 years ago
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Yeah! Bright green Zipp 303s please

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Must be Mad | 8 years ago
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Yay! Bring on the colour!
Its not often I am 'on trend'.. Black bikes look OK, but when everything is black they just look a bit dull (When everything's black - nothings black)

Neon handlebar tape is a big no no though. (Haibike )

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gmac101 | 8 years ago
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No more smidsy's?

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DavidC | 8 years ago
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The black-on-black trend in bikes and wheels of the past too many years was very dull, but this is wretched, and a bit late too, adding insult to injury.

An attempt I made to buy new running shoes two years ago was derailed by the omnipresence of fluorescent colours. So now it's bikes. Life just got a little bit worse.

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PhillBrown | 8 years ago
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Quote:

There's an old saying about blue and green, how does it go?

It's actually Orange and Green should never be seen... It relates to Irish history, particularly the symbolism of their flag. The white section of the Irish flag represents the everlasting truce/peace between the Orange Order - Protestants (Orange Section) and the Irish Republicans - Catholics (Green Section).

Hence, orange and green should never be seen without peace between them.

...Every day is a school day!

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Paul J replied to PhillBrown | 8 years ago
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PhillBrown wrote:
Quote:

There's an old saying about blue and green, how does it go?

It's actually Orange and Green should never be seen... It relates to Irish history, particularly the symbolism of their flag. The white section of the Irish flag represents the everlasting truce/peace between the Orange Order - Protestants (Orange Section) and the Irish Republicans - Catholics (Green Section).

Hence, orange and green should never be seen without peace between them.

...Every day is a school day!

That is what at least some intended the Irish tri-colour to represent. Well, almost. It's wrong to say green represents "catholics". The green represents Irish *nationalism*, which was as much as an Irish protestant cause as Unionism was. Many nationalists in Ireland - including a good number of notable leading people - were protestant.

Irish nationalism *generally* was _not_ about religion. Religion was a factor at times, most notably in parts of Ulster. However even a good number of the middle-class in Ireland (which had greater protestant proportion, even in the south, particularly in earlier days when catholicism was illegal) were unhappy with rule from London, which led to support for (at least) Home Rule.

Anyway, tl;dr: Green in the Irish flag is for nationalism, and Irish Nationalism was as much a protestant cause as a catholic one.

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sergius | 8 years ago
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What wheel is that on the THM Carbones picture?

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dave atkinson replied to sergius | 8 years ago
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sergius wrote:

What wheel is that on the THM Carbones picture?

AX Lightness U24-D, I think. 850g a pair...

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tom_w | 8 years ago
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Hooray! So bored of bikes that are either matt black or some combination of black/red/white. The first thing I noticed when I moved over to road biking from mountain biking was how dull the majority of the paint jobs were!

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Yorkshie Whippet | 8 years ago
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Cool, after 20 yrs or so I'm finally back in fashion. Ah, neon and mtbing, those days were gnarly. Does that mean the purple anodising will be back soon?

Ridley have had the customiser thing for several years, I know I've used it.

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tom_w replied to Yorkshie Whippet | 8 years ago
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Yorkshie Whippet wrote:

Does that mean the purple anodising will be back soon?

It already is  1

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