Blue is a new bike company that has only been around for a few years. Two or three as the Blue reps told me last month at the Chris Thater both. But that did not ring true even as I was feeling the after effects of my crash. My Lemond Chambery was not in the best shape (back to working order now), so the test ride offer seemed enticing. Its a company I’ve heard of before and I even had a chance to purchase one at a Team Colavita discount when Maxpowercycling.com was a Colavita Regional Amateur team in 2006. I did not know too much about Blue at the time and passed on the offer.

Blue bikes have been around for at least four years as they have been sponsoring the Colavita Women and previously the Quark team since at least 2004, so greater that three years if the answer.

In 2006 only the Colavita women’s team were riding Blue bikes. In 2007 the Colavita men switched from Felts to Blue and the name recognition grew at least in my realm of influence. So, I dropped my info and took the bike for a test drive. I figure this would be a good section to start for Velochimp.com. I can setup test rides and have every major dealer send me their bikes to test.

The RC4 is one of the lower end bikes in the Blue line. The test bikes were decked out with Shimano 105 and some lower end Maxxis tires. When a fellow racer pointed out that they were the low end tires we wondered why they would do that on a test bike. Surely you want to show that the bike gives a great ride and from my experience tires are often a major piece to the overall feel.

Once I got rolling, the bike was more impressive than I thought. My original goal for the test ride was to simply spin out of my crash on a decent bike. My Lemond was not rideable. But as I tooled around the neighborhoods around the Thater Crit course the bike seemed to want to race. The aggressive handling and stiffness make this a true racing bike.

Stiffness is one feature that I noticed right away on the Blue RC4. Stomping on the pedals all of the power seemed to go directly to my forward motion. The stiffness made my Aluminum Lemond feel like a wet noodle in comparison. I could not get over the how it felt. The ride was smooth and the handling was definitely for Criteriums and not for long distance rides.

The aggressive geometry was a great match to the Chris Thater Criterium course taking the high speed turns with ease. The sprint up seminary was much smoother with the super stiffness of the bottom bracket. The bike is very lively as you power over the top of the hill and shift down to blast down the next hill.

The bottom bracket is an aluminum lugset that connects to carbon seatstays and seattube. The beefy downtube is not quite as big as other manufacturers, but provides a good amount of stiffness even for my 220lb frame.

Another view of the bottom brackets shows a beefy downtube which made for an impressive ride.

The carbon seat stays in diamond formation.

Integrated forks and a carbon headtube mesh well with the aluminum lugs providing a stiff front end.

The frame is good, but the Shimano 105 components took away from the ride. The STI shifters were super stiff and felt cheap in comparison to the smoother Ultegra of my Lemond. The plastic levers and the sudden drops in shifts made shifting very jarring and uncertain.

The Blue RC4 has been on the US Crit circuit for years under the Colavita Women and Men and some of the racing feedback shows with a bike that is clearly made for crits. The lower end spec’d RC$ with Shimano 105 still felt very light. I had no scale, but other site reviews with Dura Ace equipped RC4 had the bike top out at the UCI minimum of 16lbs.

The RC4 is also a good bike especially if you are a budget minded racer. Currently Blue is slashing prices on RC4′s which would make it a good time to get a decent racing bike for next year. The Dura-Ace equipped bike is available for $3000 and the frame is ony $1000 which makes it a great deal. Heck, at this price, why not get two.