Giant TCR Advanced Zero

Arguably, colour is one of the biggest factors in choosing a bike, and while it's true aesthetics shouldn't play a major part of your bike choosing process, we just can't help ourselves.

While some companies manage to roll out spectacularly awful looking bikes, one company that can't be accused of producing ugly bikes is Giant. Their bikes have always looked good, with nice clean finishes. Their team bikes with the black and pink livery are particular office favourites, and definitely in contention for the best looking bike in the peloton award.

For 2007 Giant have decided to up the ante with their colours and decals, and the TCR Advanced Zero - which has just landed in the RCUK office - looks, quite honestly, stunning. The bold colours and cutting graphics are definitely a brave and bold move for the company.

Anyway, enough of the colours, it's what's underneath all that paint that really matters. The Zero is the second model down from the ultra-bling Team, and aside from the integrated seat tube it's the same frame. T800 carbon - new for 2007 - is shaped into Giant's Compact geometry, matched with a pair of T800 carbon forks.

All the carbon tubes are held together in a process called formulaOne, which has actually been the process they've used for nearly 17 years, but obviously tweaked over the years as technology and understanding of the material has improved. It's a careful process of Uni-Directional layering of hand-cut carbon (over 500 pieces are used), and using Finite Element Analysis (FEA) to build the precise amount of compliance into each frame, while ensuring the right level of stiffness.

Watch out for a full test soon...

Specs