Incolour SSR review: Lightweight, aero, and shockingly uncomfortable

The best road bikes, the ones that I sit fondly with in my mind’s eye long after the review period has ended, are like a balanced diet. A few healthy salads, regular hearty bowls of pasta, infrequent takeaways, and the occasional night where you have four martinis and a couple of cigarettes for dinner.

Some bikes are a little more salad, others have a couple more martinis on the menu, but they all regress to the mean; a happy medium of comfort, stiffness, aerodynamics, liveability, and style. The Incolour SSR is not like living on a balanced diet; it’s like trying to survive on a diet of popping candy and vitamin pills. You might not die, but you’re not going to have a particularly enjoyable time.

It is, on paper, a very accomplished machine, and a challenger for the best aero road bikes for sure. A very low weight, and a claimed aero package that is just shy of 4 watts faster than a Cervélo S5, a bike that is widely considered one of the best aero bikes on the market, and one that came out on top in our own wind tunnel testing. All the mod cons, and yet, much like the Felt Nexar, things quite quickly fell away when the rubber hit the road.

I’ve taken the SSR out on my usual test routes, involving fast flat riding, plus the usual hills and twisting descents that test the handling, plus a solid 7hr day in the chair to test its endurance capabilities, which I’ll admit is not what it’s designed for. All in all… I have not enjoyed it.

Image 1 of 10

Design and aesthetics

Visually, the Incolour SSR is a striking machine. In fact, it shares a similar vibe to the Felt Nexar, insofar as it’s clearly designed with aerodynamics at the forefront of everything, but with a slenderness that makes it look fragile against the muscular frames of the Cervélo S5 and even more so against the likes of the Factor ONE.

There’s more than a hint of a Giant TCR about the thing, with the compact frame and integrated seatpost, but the scalloped cutout to surround the rear wheel is Canyon Aeroad, and the bayonet fork is very Cervélo, at the head tube at least. The crown and legs, also extremely blade-like, are a thing of their own, and able to swallow a surprisingly large tyre. Officially the bike will accommodate a 32c tyre with a 2x setup, or a 36c with a 1x. All very modern.

What was also modern was the cockpit, which arrived in a 120x35.5 guise. A wider one also arrived, but let’s be real, I’m not going to fit that when there’s something as tastefully aero already fitted; shoulder pain be damned.

The seat mast you need to cut to size yourself, and unlike bikes from the likes of Giant whereby there’s some wiggle room in the topper to adjust the height, here you can modify your saddle height by a couple of millimetres by using different 3D printed saddle cradles. It’s certainly neat, and clearly done with aerodynamics in mind. Luckily my test model arrived with everything bang on, and topped with a suede-topped (yes - fun, right?) unpadded carbon saddle that, praise be, was at least a shape I was comfortable with. I did find after an initial test that the saddle was just on the cusp of being a little high for my tastes, so I swapped from my Bont shoes to a slightly higher stack pair of Lakes, and everything was on song from there on in.

Incolour claims ‘custom geometry’ as an option, though this is perhaps a bit of a stretch. What you can do is select a ‘more aggressive’ or ‘more relaxed’ version of each of the seven sizes (45-60), which either increase the stack and reduce the reach or vice versa while keeping the saddle height range the same, for an upcharge of $600. I tested the standard version, however, which is probably what most of you will opt for, too. A 72º head tube angle is perhaps a little slacker than most, certainly 1.5º slacker than a Tarmac, for example. The stack in my size is 2mm lower than a Tarmac, but the reach is shorter by 6mm, so like me you may be able to bump up from your usual stem size to compensate.

In terms of aero claims, SSR quotes a frontal area that is 60.37cm2 smaller than a Cervélo S5, resulting in a claimed 3.99 watt benefit at 45km/h. Take this with a pinch of salt as this was done over a yaw sweep of -20º to +20º; wind yaw angles of 20º at 45km/h aren’t impossible, but they are very rare. We don’t know what weighting Incolour used, but by the graph we have, it is clear the SSR outperforms the S5 at higher yaw angles. Regardless, to be in the right zone as the S5, taking its data at face value, with a bike that weighed 7.05kg with pedals, the aero bottle cages and the neat 3D printed titanium computer mount, is impressive. We will be testing it in the tunnel ourselves in the coming months to validate these claims.

There are also stiffness claims too, with the SSR stiffer in ‘pedalling stiffness’ (which I assume is at the BB) than a Tarmac SL7 and SL8, a Giant TCR, a Van Rysel RCR (not the RCR-F I don’t believe), and a Cannondale SuperSix. It has a stiffer head tube than an SL7, an RCR and a SuperSix, and has more laterally stiff forks than all but the TCR. Sadly, there’s no quoted data for the seatpost stiffness, something which I fear was totally overlooked, as this is by some margin the least comfortable bike I’ve ever ridden.

Image 1 of 5

Performance

Everything about this bike: the claimed aero superiority, the low weight, the modern tyre clearance, the lifetime warranty, the modern cockpit options and ‘custom geometry’, and the nifty 3D printed accessories. All of it simply falls out of the conversation because this is an almost unbearably uncomfortable bike ride.

It feels crystalline and brittle, even in comparison to the Van Rysel RCR-F, a bike that was in its own right uncomfortable but one I still managed to tap out an early spring 200km ride on without wanting to simply walk home halfway round. The main culprit is the integrated seat mast, and while some of you may look at the unpadded saddle and say that’s the culprit, I will gladly point you to my stupid flat bar road bike, which has a bare carbon saddle on it that I can sit on for hours on end with no issue. It doesn’t feel like there’s not enough give; it feels like there’s no give, and it has knock-on impacts beyond just battering your undercarriage.

On climbs, where the low weight should make it sing, the stiffness of your perch means you bounce jarringly if your cadence gets too high. The weight makes it a good climber, sure, but for extended climbs of more than a couple of minutes I want to be in a position where I am able to focus solely on the pain in my legs and lungs, and not my arse.

On the flat it is fast; part of that is down in no small part to the 355mm cockpit, which is probably going to do far more than any frame aero package, but it ticked along very happily on fast roads, and when things were smooth I could tuck into a lovely aero position. The front end may lack the lateral stiffness of a TCR, but it does feel like it has the vertical stiffness of a breezeblock. Like the rear end, the front is entirely unforgiving over anything other than beautiful millpond tarmac, and this has implications for the handling.

There’s nothing wrong with the geometry at all. It’s not like the Felt Nexar, which seemed to get it all a bit wrong, but having a degree of compliance adds a sure-footedness to the equation that the SSR lacks.

Actually, despite the slightly slacker front end, it is quite a lively bike to ride; perhaps the narrower cockpit is at play, but I don’t think to a great deal. I never felt truly at home sticking it into the corners as it felt like it could judder and skate over the surface at any time rather than hunkering down into the forces that are borne upon it and dealing with them with composure and a degree of grace.

To try and alleviate things a bit, I swapped the quite cool ‘Aerowav’ wheels (these were perfectly fine, if also quite stiff, and rather like riding Campagnolo Hyperons in my experience) for a set of Enve SES 6.7s shod with 32mm Hutchinson Blackbird Race tyres, rather than the 28mm set that came with my bike. I wanted to use 35s, which would have just cleared the front derailleur, but I didn’t fancy taking the risk. In any case, things improved marginally, but not to the point that it became enjoyable. The Aerowav wheels did come set up tubeless as standard.

The Blackbird Race is a good, and quite underrated tyre in my opinion, and the higher volume and decent spoonfuls of supple gave the SSR a bit more self-confidence, but taking it on a longer ride was truly quite hateful. 1 hour is enjoyable, you can smash it out. 2 hours is totally bearable, but three is unpleasant, and anything beyond four is torture. After seven I couldn’t ride anything for a few days, with the rear end comfort complemented by a fizzing sensation in my hands that I’ve only experienced after strimming the allotment with a 2-stroke Stihl for several hours. I know it isn't an endurance bike and I wasn't expecting an armchair, but people train on their race bikes, and this is absolutely going to detract from your training if you're doing any significant volume.

Finally, I never managed to get the headset to tighten properly. The shiny top cap wasn't machined with enough clearance for the top cap bolt, which would bind in the countersunk hole before it could fully do its job, almost getting totally stuck at one point, so I just left it a little loose.

Image 1 of 5

Value

The frameset, without a cockpit, will set you back $4,399, or $5,299 if you want the ‘custom’ geometry. That’s a lot less than an S-Works Tarmac frame, but when Specialized trickles out the standard Tarmac SL9, I suspect the differential will be less. It’s also a couple of hundred bucks less than an S-Works SL8 frameset, which is still a very, very good option and one I would pick over the SSR in a heartbeat.

When you package in the cockpit at $419 the difference between this and the best bike in our buyer’s guide, the Factor Ostro VAM, is minor. The same goes for the Cervélo S5, another absolutely sensational bike.

Verdict

I think you may have gathered at this point that I don’t think the Incolour SSR is a very good bike. It is a clear example of trying to design something that looks good on paper. It has to hit the wind tunnel numbers and the stiffness figures and the weight. It has to have the fancy 3D printed titanium hardware and the modern narrow cockpit, but it doesn’t feel like anybody took it out and actually rode the thing.

I loved watching Blackadder growing up. There’s an episode where Edmund Blackadder’s puritanical aunt and uncle come to visit, and instantly chastise him for owning chairs, which are of course an invention of Satan.

“In our house Nathaniel sits on a spike”... I think I know how he feels.