Chain Reaction Cycles have an interesting road bike on sale at the moment, the Vitus Alios. £300 (correct at time of writing) buys you an aluminium frame,Tektro brakes and a mostly Campagnolo Xenon 9-speed drivetrain. A highly recommended extra £60 will get you a carbon fork to make the ride more comfortable. Triple and compact chainset versions are available, as well as other more expensive models in the Vitus range.
At its full price of around £800 there are much better equipped bikes available, but at £360 I think the Vitus Alios Carbon in particular represents good value for money, even compared to it’s slightly cheaper brother the Vitus Razor at £260.
Vitus Alios Triple Carbon
I’m told that Vitus were well known in the 1980′s for their own-brand “Duralinox” alloy road frames. They were expensive and desirable, but were plagued by fatigue failures at the joints. However the frames on the Alios and Razor look to be generic aluminium designs manufactured in the far east and are likely to be of reasonable quality.
There’s not a lot of information or opinion available online on any of the Vitus bikes, but what there is seems generally positive. On Ramblings Mk. 2, Bryan Morton (a fellow Northern Ireland cyclist) has a review of his Vitus Alios Triple Carbon and seems very pleased with it.
There are a couple of points to be aware of. They’re 2008 models so I suspect they are being cleared out fast and cheap and won’t be available for very long. As road bikes go they’re quite heavy too (a sniff off 10Kg) and have only 8 or 9 speed transmissions, but at the price point they look hard to beat.
If you’re in the market for a cheap, entry level road bike for commuting, fitness or leisure duties I think you could do a lot worse than the Vitus Alios or Vitus Razor.
When you actually sit down and look at all the different components you suddenly realise what an amazing and often overlooked feat of engineering it is.