Cervelo R3 SL Frameset

There's no such thing as the perfect bike: We feel a deep need to preface any discussion about the Cervélo R3 SL by saying that out loud. There's no such thing as the perfect bike. We need to utter it again and again not just to keep ourselves grounded in this long-held truth of the bike industry (….it is true, right?) But perhaps more importantly, we're keen to maintain our professionalism and our dignity, and those were the first two things to slip through our fingers at our first glance of the R3 SL.

Some background is apropos. The R3 SL is spawn from Cervélo's standard R3 -- the sub-1000g wonderbike released in 2006 to some of the most ardent praise we've ever heard for a new bike. We're not talking about reviews in magazines and websites, even though we never saw a review shy of 5 stars. Rather, our interest was greatest in what we heard back from our customers who bought the R3. Sometimes it was near-hormonal bike lust aroused during their first real test of the R3. It might've been a century ride or their maiden set of intervals, but if a tone of voice could ever be characterized as "starry-eyed", we heard it in these initial ride reports. Likewise, we got plenty of comments from people who'd put in enough miles on their R3's to look past its most glamorous attributes -- its feathery weight, its supreme stiffness under power -- and rather they keyed in on the purity of its ride quality. Gone were the days, they told us, where the experience of riding chip and seal roads was one of bouncing down the road in a hand-numbing, eyeball-juggling nightmare of high-frequency vibration. Rather, the R3 seemed to glide down the road, no matter how lousy the surface.If ever a bike didn't need improvement, it was the R3. Further confirmation of this comes in its performance in the professional peloton.

Fabian Cancellara won the '06 Paris-Roubaix on his stock, off-the-shelf R3. It's no secret that Paris-Roubaix serves as the ultimate proving grounds for the manliness of any new product. And this durability was complemented by the R3's collection of mountaintop stage wins in the '06 Giro d'Italia -- affirmation that the toughness of the R3 doesn't come at the expense of lightness (for the dizzying climbs) or handling (for the frightful descents). These initial victories were followed with plenty more page 1 headlines, including Stuart O'Grady's victory in the 2007 Paris-Roubaix.

When the engineers at Cervélo chose to do some nip & tuck work to the R3 in order to birth the R3 SL it wasn't because they needed to, but because they wanted to. The critical details go unchanged: It's still a frameset built around optimizing stiffness-to-weight ratio. The Squoval downtube and chainstays as well as the multishaped top tube and leaf-spring-like seatstays maintain the original design of the R3. But in building the R3 SL they apply different ratios of the same materials. They repositioned and reshaped select carbon sections -- for example, making some sections hourglass-shaped instead of rectangular; thereby saving weight (think about it: an hourglass has less surface area than a rectangle) without sacrificing one iota of strength or stiffness. Combine these carbon-specific changes with the fact that the R3 SL has no paint and a redesigned super-light seat clamp, and you end up with a 900g frame. And that's its real weight, not the weight lacking a derailleur hanger, seat clamp, etc. It's roughly a 100g weight savings in comparison to the standard R3. That's the story of the R3 SL: It's an R3 on a diet, and it's done up in the fastest color known to man: Black.

So, to go back to our original question, the R3 SL isn't the perfect bike, is it? Oh, it's close…very close. But it's not, we suppose, because it doesn't have the breathtaking aero profile of the SLC-SL. Short of those fine-tuned aerodynamics -- something you'll only get from the Cervélo Soloist family of bikes, and no place else -- it's as close to perfection as we've ever seen. But if you ask Carlos Sastre what he thinks about the R3 SL -- after all, he earned overall victory at the 2008 Tour de France on an R3 SL (he rode it in every stage, save the TT's) -- he might debate its lack of perfection.

The R3 SL comes with a 3T Funda Pro carbon fiber fork, an FSA Orbit IS integrated headset, and a 3T Doric Ltd 27.2mm carbon fiber seatpost. It requires a braze-on front derailleur and an English bottom bracket. It's available in 6 sizes between 48cm-61cm.

Size	Top Tube	Head Tube	Head Tube Angle	Seat Angle	Standover
48	51.5	10.0	72.5	73.0	70.9
51	53.0	12.0	73.0	73.0	72.9
54	54.5	14.0	73.0	73.0	74.6
56	56.5	16.0	73.0	73.0	76.4
58	58.0	18.0	73.0	73.0	78.1
61	59.2	20.0	73.0	73.0	80.0