Diamondback is owned by Accell Group, a large holding company containing bike brands, just like Dorel (Cannondale, Schwinn, Mongoose, GT, others), and PON (Cervelo, Focus, others). Accell owns Raleigh, LaPierre, Redline and Seattle Bike Supply, and others.
As a company Diamondback is a little bit Canyon, a little bit Cannondale. How is it like Cannondale? Dorel has done a very good job of selling its brands through a number of channels, including mass market, and when you sell to that channel it's hard to convince the Independent Bike Dealer that you have his back. Dorel has convinced most IBDs that it honors the IBD channel since it purchased Cannondale. That brand has remained true to the independent dealer even as some of its "sister" brands are sold in through the mass market.
Accell is having to walk that same knife edge, because Raleigh is an IBD bike brand like Cannondale, but Diamondback is taking a route that the IBD chain despises.
And this is how Diamondback is like Canyon. It's primary channel is consumer direct. It's also like Canyon in that it isn't just a consumer direct product that cuts all corners and costs. The German brand Canyon is polishing and burnishing its brand's upscale image through sponsoring Pro Tour teams and A-list triathletes. Diamondback is aiming high, sponsoring the U.S.-based Continental Optum Team. This brand was the bike sponsor at the Wildflower Triathlon, and is the bike ridden by the Wattie Ink team and Rachel McBride.
Diamondback has a two-degrees-of-separation tie to triathlon. The original Diamondback brand was founded and owned by West Coast Cycles during the 1980s, and its sister brand was Centurion. The Dave Scott Centurion bicycle was one of the most successful triathlon bike sponsorships ever, and after Dave Scott it was Mike Pigg aboard it prior to his long stint with Trek. Diamondback was at that time the MTB specialty brand at West Coast Cycles.
The other tie is Diamondback's current marketing head, Phil Howe, who has a personal history as a 4-time Hawaiian Ironman finisher stretching back to 1983.
Obviously the current iteration of Diamonback is not as an MTB and BMX brand. I've ridden a couple of these "new" Diamondbacks, road and tri, and I like them. The Serios is the bike offered to triathletes.
The Serios is available in several builds, and I rode the AF. This is the expensive model ($8,500). It's a mechanically shifted Dura Ace bike, and the model F, at $7,500, is the electronic bike (Ultegra). In my opinion, fewer will buy the AF, more will buy the F, because it's electronic and it's $1000 cheaper. Or they're going to buy the S at $3,500 with its 105 kit. But the S has the ugly front-end set-up I hate with all superbikes jury-rigged un-super, with standard stems sat atop bikes that really just want the superbike front ends they were built to accept.
Let's talk about the AF and the F. The engineers and designers behind this bike have a proper tri bike pedigree. If I told you their backgrounds you would say, "Their bona fides are established." I'm not going into detailed bios because Diamondback is sensitive about it, so, can you just take my word for it?
Why does that matter? Because I have not tested this bike for its aerodynamics. I'm not going to ask you to take my word that it's slippery, because I don't know if it is. Nobody can ride a bike and tell you that it's fast. "It feels fast," might mean something, but nothing that correlates to actual speed. Absent any data it's at least important (to me) that the bike wasn't the work of industrial designers making something that looks fast or sexy, but by those with a history of making bikes that have proven themselves demonstrably fast. That said, whether this bike actually is fast I do not know. But "it feels fast."
The time it took between opening the box and ride-ready was 30 minutes, that is, ride-ready but not yet adjusted to my fit coordinates. If you're going to ship a bike directly to a consumer I think it is pretty important that it be this easy. The packaging was robust and protective.
Geometrically the bike is midrange, maybe on the tallish side. As with a lot of Superbikes, this bike is a little bit lower than the stack/reach suggests because the integrated front end is lower than a standard-stem and standard aerobar would be. It's also longer, as the available stems are measured 75mm, 95mm and 115mm. I'd swap the 115mm for a 55mm, because tri bikes want shorter stems than road bikes do for proper handling. The bike sent to me was the 58cm and it came with the 115mm stem. In my opinion that length stem should be held in abeyance for need; it should not be sent OE to the customer. The stems people are going to want for this bike are the 75mm and the 95mm.
These stems are flat, no elevation to them, and the HED Corsair aerobar is flat as well, so, this along with the length of the stems conspires to take a midrange geometry and lengthen and lower it.
Compare this to a review just published yesterday. This bike here, the Serios, in size 56, has a stack and reach of 551mm and 421mm respectively. The Quintana Roo Prsix in size 54 has dimensions of 520mm and 425mm. The bikes are close to the same length, but the Serios is about 3 centimeters taller per that length. But the bikes fit more closely to each other than it would appear, because the QR's integrated front end is average to slightly tall, while the front end (integrated stem) of the Serios is very low, very flat.
This is why, with these superbikes, you can't simply judge the fit "personality" (narrow/tall, or long/low) by the stack and reach of the frame; you have to look a the integrated stems and front ends, as well as the handlebars each bike is spec'd with. Then you'll have a complete view of how that bike is going to fit, and whether it's a match for your morphology and riding style.
How do you raise the front end of the Serios, if you need it higher? By aerodynamic spacers that sit under the integrated stems. Look at the image above. You can see how flat the front end is, and it's got one of these aero spacers between the frame and the stem, raising the front-end a centimeter. You can stack these spacers. They interlock: up-up-up.
It is similar to Cervelo's P5 pedestals, and it's one of the two ways you can pedestal the TriRig Alpha X integrated aerobar. In fact, it's a lot like the TriRig Sigma X stem. If you're familiar with how this stem pedestals for height, then you pretty much know how the Serios front end works.
It's a good thing the bike does pedestal this way because the HED Corsair – the aerobar spec'd on this bike – does not pedestal. This makes the Corsair and the Serios a good match for each other. Because the bike allows the front end to raise through a means other than pedestaling, the Corsair's signature feature – armrests you flip up while you're out of the saddle climbing – can be employed. I found that I liked, and used, this feature when test riding the Serios.
I wish the bike had more fore/aft adjustment. The aeobar extensions are not a problem, you just cut them to length. Of course, after you cut, that's it. The extensions plug into a socket on the Corsair bar (see this in the image below?), so, once it's cut it's cut. Which I have no problem with. But where your pads sit forward of the bottom bracket on this bike depends on 3 things: the reach of the frame; the length of the stem; and what set of pad holes you choose. This is fine, but somewhat limiting and I'll talk about this more below.
How does it ride? Like a tri bike should. The front end is properly agile while stable. I couldn't get it to speed wobble in a fast descent. I loved it in and out of the saddle. The Hed Corsair is very close to my favorite pursuit bar. (Not my favorite aero bar; but near to my favorite pursuit bar.) It's spec'd well for the style of bike it is. No complaints. And, it looks good. I think I'll get the girls riding this bike.
Here was something weird, I don't know if you've come across this, I'm finding this on more and more tri bikes: a "stop" that limits the turning radius of the handlebar. You might think you've assembled the bike wrong when you feel these turning radius limiters, but this stop is in there on purpose. It's a feature, to keep the front brake caliper and handlebars from turning all the way around and scratching the frame. What if you need that tight turning radius? I tried to find an occasion where I might need it. A tight U-turn around a cone on a one-lane road. The paperboy up a very steep climb. I couldn't max out the turning radius. Still, some folks might be unnerved by this, and if you want to remove this feature (built into the fork crown) you can easily do so.
The bike is designed so that the steerer is cut absolutely to length, with a top cap that sits flush with the top of the stem. (You do see this in the image above, right? The patch of red in the otherwise black integrated stem?) Very slick. But, you are now locked into this height. You can go lower, but not higher. You've got to know you aren't going to need to move the bars higher.
If you want to make SURE this is your right height before you cut the steerer – if you want to take the bike out for a test drive first – it was hard to figure out how one is supposed to compress the head parts with that extra steerer sticking up. If you temporarily stick headset spacers in there to compresses the bearings, centering ring, spacers and so forth to keep the steerer fixed and stable when the stem is tightened to it, such spacers are going to score the top of the stem. Diamondback ought to include a piece in the package to act as a temporary front end compression aid, pending the eventual cutting of the steerer.
That's the front end. What about the rear? The seat post is built with a lot of fore/aft movement. It comes spec'd with an ISM Road, so you'll want to move the seat post hardware way back on the seat post "ways." If you prefer a standard saddle you can move it all way forward. More and more bikes are going to need to change their seat post mechanisms, as the Serios does, in the future to accommodate the big fore/aft range required to accommodate all saddle styles.
Finally, back to the fore/aft adjustment for a moment. Because this bike has barely enough fore/aft adjustment, and relies heavily on a stem of the proper length, and is neither height nor length adjustable without making cuts that cannot be uncut later, the customer needs to know what size frame, and length stem, is right before the bike is sent. This is especially so in a consumer-direct environment. I spent some time working with the Diamondback engineers on a system like Trek, Cervelo, BMC, Felt and others use that matches their superbikes to customers based on the length (X) distance from the bottom bracket to the center of the armrest pad, and the absolute height (Y) distance to the top of the pad. Quintana Roo recently finished its chart and it's shown and linked to in yesterday's overview. I'm assured Diamondback is nearing completion on its X/Y fit and sizing chart.
Diamondback's website is not just an online brochure, it's building a community, and a how-to. It's a tall ask for a direct-sale company's website to provide backfill for the LBS you won't need to reply upon, but Diamondback is taking a crack at providing that knowledge and content. Still, a focus on upper-end bikes makes some sense, because the prospective owners of these bikes don't need to be tutored in how to make adjustments and work on bikes. The Serios, Podium and its other upper-end bikes offer something in between the typical method of selling bikes and the straight-from-Asia barely-branded bikes shipped direct like HongFu and Deng Fu.
Consumer-direct bikes have never really worked in the U.S., and I think it's because the dealer network in North America, while under severe attack from mail order, still is much stronger than its counterpart in Europe. Still, every year Canyon delays coming to America does Diamondback have a freer hand to try to establish consumer direct in America?
