Comtat Telegraphe Team Plus

What do you know about Comtat? Not a whole lot, we’re guessing. It’s a new London-based brand that sources carbon frames from the Far East and builds them up in the UK at competitive prices. As with Planet-X and Ribble, for example, you can either decide on the spec yourself from a wide selection of parts on offer, or go for a complete bike option.

The Télégraphe is the most expensive of Comtat’s four frame designs – it’s £850 for the frame, fork and headset – and it’s available in two different complete bike builds. First there’s the Pro spec, with a high-end Campag Super Record groupset and Fast Forward F4R tubulars (£3,699). And then there’s our one, which is the £1,799 Team Plus with a Campag Centaur gruppo and Fulcrum Racing 5s.

The frame is painted 12k carbon fibre built to a fairly aggressive road race geometry. It’s a distinctive-looking piece of work with a beefy down tube that’s squared-off teardrop in profile – if that makes any sense. Call it a round-cornered triangular profile if you prefer. Whichever takes your fancy, it’s chunky reaching across the full width of the bottom bracket shell and fixing it firmly in position.

The head tube certainly errs towards the short side – 170mm on our 58cm model – putting you into a low and racy ride position. That’s not so extreme that you’ll get backache as soon as you climb aboard but it’s a couple of centimetres shorter than, say, a similarly sized Specialized Roubaix which is designed for long ride comfort. You do get 3cm of headset spacers to play with, though, to fine-tune the front-end height.

Taller riders should note that our 58cm frame is the largest size available, and it comes with a 56.2cm effective top tube – which really isn’t all that big. The other sizes are 49, 51, 53 and 55cm.

The lower headset bearing is 1.5in to add a little extra stiffness up front while deep and boxy chainstays do a similar job out back. In contrast to this oversized-ness, the seatstays are super-skinny. Think Posh Spice after a bout of flu – they’re like spaghetti. The rear brake cable heads backwards inside the almost-horizontal top tube, the decals are protected by a good layer of lacquer and the finish quality is good throughout.

Comtat’s straight-legged fork is 12K carbon too – full carbon; no hidden alloy steerer – and it comes in black for the full-on stealthy effect, or white if you want a bit of contrast.

As we said, you can choose your spec for yourself if you like with groupsets from Shimano, Campag and SRAM, wheels from Campag, Easton, Fast Forward, Zipp and Fulcrum… you get the idea – there are plenty of options available. You just select it on the Comtat website and press ‘go’.

In the Team Plus build you get Centaur, which is Campagnolo’s fifth level groupset – solid, reliable 10-speed performance with a few cheeky little flourishes like the carbon weave on the brake levers and the outer plate of the rear mech. The Fulcrum Racing 5 wheels, designed to stand up to daily use, are a good match while 3T provide the alloy stem and carbon seatpost and bars.

The ride

Comtat might not have a long and illustrious racing pedigree but you can’t argue with the Télégraphe‘s ride – it’s quick and lively from the off. Stamp on the pedals and it responds keenly – as you’d expect from a bike weighing in at an impressively light 7.84kg (17.2lb).

It’s a stiff frame with very little sideways flex around the big bottom bracket junction. Get out of the saddle to apply full-torque and it obstinately refuses to budge offline. It’s a similar story elsewhere whether you’re wrestling with the front end on a tough climb or haring into a fast downhill bend. We tried all our favourite patent-pending aggressive moves but the Télégraphe stood up to them all without flinching.

The Fulcrum Racing 5s aren’t the lightest wheels ever but they’re a good option for everyday use because of their reliability. The bearings run smooth, the slim, aero spokes cut through the air well, and they’re pretty strong too. We were throwing the bike around and banking it as far over as we could, and although there was a little movement in the rims there was never so much that we suffered any brake rub. Although they lack the all-out zip and climbing prowess of true lightweights, they’re solid all-rounders and we’ve found in the past that they tend to stay true as you rack up the miles.

As for the Campagnolo Centaur kit, well, it just keeps on performing. The mechs are precise, light and hardly ever need adjusting. The levers provide positive shifting and are superbly comfortable. And the skeleton brakes – dual pivot at the front, single pivot at the back – provide an impressive amount of power so you have the confidence to wing it on the downhills.

Whether you prefer the Campag shift action to that of Shimano or SRAM is always going to come down to personal preference, but you have to say that this is superbly engineered kit that barely loses out to its more costly stablemates in terms of weight or function.

We got in dozens of shortish 1-2hr rides aboard the Comtat and several longer rides of over 5hrs too and we never had any worries on comfort. There’s enough vibration damping in the frame and forks to keep the ride smooth without any spine-locking rattling as soon as you hit pockmarked road surfaces, and Selle Italia’s SLR saddle is way more forgiving than its slimline looks might suggest.

Campag’s Vari-Cushion silicone hoods are comfy too and a small amount of movement in the 3T Rotundo Team bars’ drops takes the sting out of any potholes when you’re down there.

Verdict

Good Campag-equipped performance bike at an excellent price