THE TARMAC
The Tarmac is the lightest bike Specialized has ever made, but what makes it so outstanding is its utter completeness as a race bike. Its handling is sublime, while its aero advantage slays the competition. It truly is the complete race bike, and it's about to take your riding to a whole new level. Come see and test ride the Specialized Tarmac bikes at Kozy's Cyclery, we are your local bike shop.
Nothing is Lighter, Faster and Better Handling
When it was time to design a new Tarmac, Specialized looked to pro racing to decide how they should improve it. And with the more extreme needs of the top pros, they knew they'ed need Rider-First Engineered™ handling, but in a lighter, faster, and smoother package. To pull this off, they turned traditional design on its head, but without a doubt, it’s the fastest, most complete race bike you’ve ever ridden.
Rider-First Engineered
Rider-First Engineered™ provides a uniform experience for all riders, regardless of their frame size, so everyone receives the exact performance the Tarmac was intended for—fast and predictable. For the new Tarmac, however, Specialized updated their process to take more than just handling into consideration. Through their strategic partnership with McLaren Applied Technologies, they integrated a structural analysis simulation that led them to a design that sees three unique forks for the different frame sizes of the Tarmac. Each fork attaches to the frame through a 1.5-inch lower bearing, while a new carbon layup was developed in exacting, painstaking detail. Through these technologies, all seven sizes have tailored levels of stiffness, making the experience for each rider exactly the same—stiff, yet compliant, snappy, yet aero, and of course, fast.
Rider First, Gender Second
Through their partnership with Retül, Specialized has access to over 40,000 rider's digital fit data, and through this, they've changed how they tackle their approach to fit and frame geometry. The way forward is to reimagine their frame geometry by analyzing their fit data, not by gender, but simply by experience. For competitive road riders, they looked at the collective of all riders' stack and reach of the handlebar positions and concluded that there was no statistical difference in position correlating to gender. There was, however, the need to accommodate for handlebar width, crankarm length and saddle preferences, which lead us to create separate models of Men's and Women's Tarmacs bikes built on shared frame geometries.
