Funny thing, Jim Felt is best known for his upper-end race bikes, ridden in the past by Paula Newby-Fraser and for many years by Michellie Jones. Yet for the 2002 season the big news was Felt's entry-level road race bikes. At the 105-equipped level and below there was really only one company to touch Felt, and that was Giant (at least in terms of value, if not sales—Trek, Specialized, et al, will always get their sales by virtue of their distribution).
Not that Felt cried uncle when it came to tri bikes, but its flagship model was the $1700-ish S22. Now Felt is leveraging its ability to make a low-priced, high-spec road machine, and pointing this muscle at the tri market with the S32. This is a 105-shifted bike with FSA cranks and other "cross-spec" components: by that we mean hubs, cranks, BB, brakes, etc., that are not necessarily a "down-spec" but are probably money savers over spec'ing the whole bike Shimano.
What we don't like about the Felt is the geometry. But it's the same thing we don't like about the geometry offered by Litespeed, Aegis, Kestrel, and many other companies. The top tubes are too long and the head tubes too tall. The solution? Just buy the bike in a smaller size and it'll fit perfectly.
The S-32 fits into the same category as the QR Kilo, in terms of price, geometry and theme. In the larger sizes, the S32 will have angles slacker than we like, in the 75.5- to 76-degree range. Since the top tubes are also longer than we like, there's an elegent solution: Just move the saddle a bit forward, and you'll shorten the top tube and steepen the seat angle all in one fell swoop. Furthermore, the S32 is equipped with a straight (not set-back) seat post, so moving the saddle all the way forward on this style of seat post ought to take care of the geometry issues—that and perhaps buying the bike a size smaller than you would QR's Kilo or Cervelo's One.
The S32 sells for $1350, which is $45 less than QR's Kilo. The latter goes back to its roots by sporting a retro look. The all-black bike looks the same as it did in its early years, a decade ago, when it was an extremely popular tri bike. I well remember this bike's rise in popularity, coinciding with a road test published in Triathlon Today!—a publication owned by Lew Kidder, subsequently sold to the publishers of Velo News and renamed Inside Triathlon. That review launched the Kilo and from that day until this it's been the anchor of Quintana Roo's tri bike line.
The Kilo and the S32 both come in 650c in the smaller sizes and 700c in the larger, but the Kilo may have a few crossover sizes—frame sizes where you could buy the bike in either wheelsize.
The bikes are quite similar in appearance and in spec. The S32 may have a slight bit more 105 (as in the front derailleur; the Kilo shifts with a Tiagra in the front and a 105 in the rear). They both spec non-Shimano parts outside the shifting system, with Felt choosing FSA cranks (as noted above) and the Kilo sporting a Truvativ crank. Both cranks are excellent choices.
One significant difference is in the frame alloys. The Felt is made of #7005 aluminum, the Kilo is a 6000-series bike. Ironically, the Kilo was the very first bike to be made of Easton's then-landmark alloy. Who was one of Easton's head engineers in the development of that tubeset? Jim Felt. Now the Kilo has strayed from its 7000-series roots, and Felt is also, with this model, spec'ing a generic #7005 instead of the tubes provided by his old employer. This makes sense in a bike of this price point, since #7005 is easily made by Taiwan's tubing mills.
These certainly won't be the only full-blown tri bikes offered in the $1300 to $1400 price range but, brand-wise, they're certainly two of the heavyweights.
Both brands have more up their respective sleeves, including QR's continuation of its retro theme with the reintroduction of the "Zero Gravity." This bike will not bear much resemblance to the old, lightweight steel ZG of a decade ago (a bike which was ridden to several bike course records on Ironman courses, some of which still stand). We'll write about QR's new ZG (and its other models) and the other interesting new Felt bikes (road and tri) in our live Interbike coverage during the first week of October.
