Designer Erik Klemm discusses the 2016 Giant TCR Advanced SL 0

At the end of June, I attended the launch of the 2016 Giant TCR Advanced SL 0 in Mallorca, Spain. During the event, and between rides on the new bike, I spoke with designer Erik Klemm. Klemm was behind many of the refinements of the TCR, which has been in Giant’s lineup since 1997.

First, we discussed his overall goals for the new bike. “Some of the goals were keeping the product beautiful, keeping the proportions right and really focusing on a lot of the features that we have from our previous generation of TCR and improving on those,” he said. The features that carry over from previous versions are the OverDrive 2 steerer system, the PowerCore bottom bracket and the MegaDrive down tube.

We got into some of the specific changes that he and the engineers made to the bike, such as the placement of the lower bearing in the head tube and the return of the yoke at the top of the seatstays. But, we also got into how engineering and design intersect with the TRC. “There is a fine balance between making a product strictly engineering focused and strictly design focused,” Klemm said. “It has to do with proportions, surfacing, with all those details working in the right spots. So that was something we focused on: a product that is not only beautiful but also has all the engineering-equipped pieces together to really get you to the top of the climb faster or to make you sprint faster. So really, it’s an overall feeling that we really wanted to convey with the new TCR—beauty, stiffness-to-weight and those two pieces working together.”