Giant’s tenth TCR is its lightest yet – but it’s not all about weight
Words Sam Challis Photography Tapestry
No matter whether it is measured in influence or longevity, the Giant TCR is one impressive bike. It started 26 years ago when British engineer Mike Burrows introduced its Total Compact Road geometry concept, which has since been adopted by nearly all modern road bikes, and Giant’s latest revision means the TCR is now in its tenth generation.
To hear Giant tell it, the bike is better than ever, yet in the past couple of years the case for the TCR to continue its remarkable run in the brand’s line-up had started to look shaky.
‘Both the Propel aero bike and the Defy endurance bike have made huge leaps forward in their latest revisions,’ says David Ward, Giant’s UK product manager. ‘They caught up, to a certain degree, to the previous TCR.’
This triggered speculation that the TCR might actually be retired, or at least drastically repositioned as a pure climber’s bike in the vein of Specialized’s Aethos, but Ward says there was never any doubt internally as to the TCR’s continuation and direction.
‘Going down an ultra-light path was part of the discussion, but only so much as to rule it out,’ says Ward. ‘We all knew where the TCR needed to go, and it wasn’t a reinvention. Its history shows the benefit of opting for incremental improvement. As for dropping the model, that was out of the question. The newest TCR has reinstated a clear hierarchy of speed, weight and comfort between our three road bikes. The Propel will always be the fastest, the Defy the most comfortable, and the TCR is the lightest.’
Look out for those lasers
So while Giant didn’t opt to go all-in on weight reduction, that’s still arguably where the latest TCR has made the biggest gains. The manufacturer says frame weight on the medium TCR Advanced SL is down to a feathery 690g, especially impressive given this includes the integrated seatpost. It represents a 10% drop over the last generation and is competitive with the lightest frames on the market that don’t use integrated seatposts. As a result, that same medium Advanced SL-tier model should weigh in at 6.4kg fully built.
‘This was achieved via a combination of changes,’ says Ward. ‘One of the more straightforward ones was making the top tube, seat tube and seatstays smaller – they now have 2% less surface area. Another was a modification to our manufacturing technique.
Ward says that for previous TCRs, Giant had been l
