New Campagnolo Ekar coming on February 20th?

[vespasianus]

Originally Posted by gfk_velo

Yes, the cassette bodies and hub components are generally common across the Campag and Fulcrum ranges.

Races and balls, axles and cones or in the case of sealed bearings, the specs of the cartridges used - are shared as is most of the manufacturing. Ditto heat and surface treatments of the alloys. Some spokes are also shared, mostly radial but there are some common lengths and configurations amoungst the "crossing" spokes too, even though the differences in spoke pattern don't allow the hub shells to be shared, necessarily.

The way those parts are assembled into the hub shells are basically the same across the two brands and have been practiaclly forever - with the exception of the entry level Fulcrum (Racing 9 / 900) where they are stand-alone as "Racing Sport" used to be.

Some rim extrusions are the same (in terms of both material and physical dimensions) but differently treated in terms of final machining, some are different - none of the carbon rims are shared AFAICR.

Thanks. For gravel, I will take 200 grams of weight for durability any day and these new wheels look great.

[Mark McM]

Originally Posted by nickl

Campagnolo obviously is not the least expensive and certainly isn’t an equivalent to their competitor’s example you provided. For example, Ekar features carbon fiber cranks, rebuildable brifters, 13 speed cassette, etc. What is the RX400, a 10 speed?

https://bike.shimano.com/en-EU/produ.../RD-RX400.html

Thank you for proving my point. As an analogy, just like Kia makes affordable cars with 4 cylinder engines while luxury brand Ferrari makes makes expensive cars with carbon fiber and 8 cylinder engines, affordable brand Shimano makes affordable gravel drivetrains with 10 speeds while luxury brand Campagnolo makes expensive gravel drivetrains with carbon fiber with 13 speeds. You've made a good case that Campagnolo is concentrating on the high-end niche of the market.

[nickl]

[QUOTE=Mark McM;3354836]Thank you for proving my point. As an analogy, just like Kia makes affordable cars with 4 cylinder engines while luxury brand Ferrari makes makes expensive cars with carbon fiber and 8 cylinder engines, affordable brand Shimano makes affordable gravel drivetrains with 10 speeds while luxury brand Campagnolo makes expensive gravel drivetrains with carbon fiber with 13 speeds. You've made a good case that Campagnolo is concentrating on the high-end niche of the market.[/QUOTE.

Thanks for restating the obvious.

[jambee]

Is campy going after the OEM market?

[gfk_velo]

Originally Posted by jambee

Is campy going after the OEM market?

OE is always interesting.

It drives volume & utimately & increasingly, involvement in ProTour, these days.

Bike brands are, in ProTour, usually the people who dictate equipment choices, based on what they fit on the bikes the public buys.

Example - AG2R moves from BMC (who spec CA on their high end bikes) to Van Rysel (who spec Shimano), so the team equipment sponsor changes. Not about money or who offers what - purely because of the shift of headline sponsor to Decathlon, their house-brand of bike and where they do most of their assembly.
Last time I looked (caveat, may have changed since Jan but I don't think so), 10/18 ProTour team websites, the groupset supplier isn't listed as a separate sponsor or even "supplier".

[rain dogs]

I'm always surprised that for all the business and manufacturing experts/consultants we seem to have on the forum, there is a serious and surprising lack of understanding what influence scale (principally, but amongst many other things) has on unit price when the inevitable Campagnolo vs Shimano comparison comes up.

[vespasianus]

Originally Posted by rain dogs

I'm always surprised that for all the business and manufacturing experts/consultants we seem to have on the forum, there is a serious and surprising lack of understanding what influence scale (principally, but amongst many other things) has on unit price when the inevitable Campagnolo vs Shimano comparison comes up.

Well, that is funny in itself. The other thing that few people consider is that the USA is not the center of the commercial world. Italian brands are making significant profit in places like Taiwan for example.

[morrisond]

Has anyone seen EKAR GT for sale anywhere?

[KonaSS]

From Bikerumor......

Campy has been quiet about real-world availability so far, although we have been told that you should be able to order complete bikes built up with Ekar GT this week. We’ve also not had it in our hands yet, either.

The new alloy Zonda GT wheels are also relatively affordable at $750 / 690€.

Historically, Campagnolo has only released new groupsets when the products were already in shops or in-transit on the way to retailers. So far we haven’t heard of anyone with them in stock ahead of the launch.

https://bikerumor.com/campagnolo-eka...re-affordable/

[AngryScientist]

Originally Posted by KonaSS

The new alloy Zonda GT wheels are also relatively affordable at $750 / 690€.

I wonder what the "street price" on these will wind up being. I haven't been looking in a long while, but rim brake C17 Zonda's used to be easy to rind new <$400.

These are also not too far away from the price of disc carbon Shamals.

[oldpotatoe]

Originally Posted by vespasianus

Well, that is funny in itself. The other thing that few people consider is that the USA is not the center of the commercial world. Italian brands are making significant profit in places like Taiwan for example.

Yup, the good ole USA is a third place market behind Asia and Europe with regards to bike stuff.

[Zackus]

Originally Posted by AngryScientist

I wonder what the "street price" on these will wind up being. I haven't been looking in a long while, but rim brake C17 Zonda's used to be easy to rind new <$400.

These are also not too far away from the price of disc carbon Shamals.

It's a real question out of this whole thing since Carbon shamals and current ekar are so heavily discounted across the web RN. in just the last week, I bought those two things for $1500 total. wheels were new overstock, and groupset here on the forum, but would have only bumped the price ~$200 from a retailer. Will these two new offerings be able to compete with that?

Maybe Campy is waiting for a bit of that stock to sell through

[mtaffe]

Originally Posted by Upcountry

I simply don't understand how the bosses at Campagnolo are making some of these decisions... And how the marketing department is okay with trying to spin every product release as something revolutionary... The pricing wasn't the issue people had with Ekar. At launch it was head to head with GRX Di2, arguably high, but that resolved it self in the years since its release, as evident by the availability at about half of MSRP.
In my summation, they're about three years behind the rest of the industry, and three years in bike terms is a whole generation.
(yes I know they have a whopping one extra gear over other brands, but lets be frank, this is a talking point rather than a feature or benefit)

As Saint Nigel of Tufnel told us, most blokes are hammering along in their 12th cog, all the way up, all the way up, on the 12th...where can they go from there? where? nowhere, exactly. What the Ekar rider does if they need that extra push, you know what they do? Put it in the 13th cog. exactly. One faster.

[Erikg]

Any predictions on what will happen with the regular Ekar group? Curious if it will be re-designed in a couple of years based on GT refinements (i.e. 104 BCD, refined brifter ergonomics, etc.), or, will it be discontinued after the current stock sells?

The 'GT' naming is also a little odd compared to the road line-up. What does 'GT' stand for? Chorus, Record, Super Record are familiar, how will the gravel line develop? Ekar GT, Ekar, Super Ekar? It's a bit vague.

I am quite curious if the road bike world would ever embrace a 1x13 in the future. it could be GT = Gravel, Ekar gets replaced by Chorus 1x and so on..... hmmmm, maybe not.

[Zackus]

Originally Posted by Erikg

Any predictions on what will happen with the regular Ekar group? Curious if it will be re-designed in a couple of years based on GT refinements (i.e. 104 BCD, refined brifter ergonomics, etc.), or, will it be discontinued after the current stock sells?

The 'GT' naming is also a little odd compared to the road line-up. What does 'GT' stand for? Chorus, Record, Super Record are familiar, how will the gravel line develop? Ekar GT, Ekar, Super Ekar? It's a bit vague.

I am quite curious if the road bike world would ever embrace a 1x13 in the future. it could be GT = Gravel, Ekar gets replaced by Chorus 1x and so on..... hmmmm, maybe not.

my prediction earlier in the thread is that with this more budget offering, once regular ekar sells out, that would leave room for a high end ekar, potentially wireless, more carbon, etc. So at that point there would be two, budget and fancy.

This is just my prediction.