Steel, sparkly, green: I love All-City’s Mr Pink Classic
Steel forked do-it-all road frameset reintroduced
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After feedback from its customers, All-City recently reintroduced the much-loved Mr Pink Classic, which ditches the carbon fork of the last few generations of the bike in favour of a classic, lugged steel fork.
I’ve just taken delivery of the handsome striped frameset and have spent the last few days fondling its beautiful brazed-on bits.
The Mr Pink is designed to be a do-it-all road bike that can tackle anything from fast rides to light gravel detours, with clearances for up to 32mm tyres, or 28mm when paired with mudguards.
On the subject of mudguards, the Mr Pink has mounts for full coverage guards front and rear, with the rear mounts neatly tucked away into the inside face of the seatstays.
This is one of the things that attracted me to Mr Pink as the increased comfort and decreased maintenance afforded by full cover mudguards should prove invaluable through the coming winter months.
The bike is built with Columbus’ Zona tubing and uses a pleasing mix of lugged and TIG-welded construction. Particular highlights include the socketed dropouts front and rear, the classic flat profile of the fork crown and the beefy brazed-on support at the top of the seat tube. The inside of the frame is also ED coated (a fancy powder-coating-like finish that protects the frame from rust) to improve longevity.
Fans of fuss-free maintenance will be delighted to see that the bike is built around the most standard of standards and reeling off the spec sheet — a 27.2mm seatpost, 1 ⅛in straight headtube, external gear cable routing, a 68mm threaded bottom bracket and a replaceable hanger — will set the heart of any mechanic aflutter.
However, the real highlight is the paintwork.
Every generation of the Mr Pink has been exceptionally lovely, but this sparkly striped jadey-appley-green finish might just be my favourite yet.
A production steel frameset is never going to be a featherweight, but the Mr Pink isn’t shockingly heavy — the fork, with an uncut steerer and no star nut weight weighs 1,085g and my size 55cm frame comes in at 2,145g. For those after something a little lighter, a carbon fork is still available for the frameset.
The Mr Pink is also available as a complete build — though the specs vary from territory to territory — and in a rather lovely, limited edition splatter paint job to mark the 10th anniversary of the bikes introduction.
Both the classic and carbon-forked frameset cost £999 / $999, with the 10th-anniversary version coming in at £1,300 / £1,150.
This particular frameset will be built up with Shimano’s all-new 105 R7000 groupset, with longer-term plans to turn it into my dynamo’d, be-fendered, go-to long-distance lane-smashing winter wagon.
Watch this space for updates as the build process progresses!
Authors
Jack Luke is the deputy editor at BikeRadar and has been fettling with bikes for his whole life. Always in search of the hippest new niche in cycling, Jack is a self-confessed gravel dork, fixie-botherer, tandem-evangelist and hill climb try hard. Jack thinks nothing of bikepacking after work to sleep in a ditch or taking on a daft challenge for the BikeRadar YouTube channel. He is also a regular contributor to the BikeRadar podcast. With a near encyclopaedic knowledge of cycling tech, ranging from the most esoteric retro niche to the most cutting-edge modern kit, Jack takes pride in his ability to seek out stories that would otherwise go unreported. He is also particularly fond of tan-wall tyres, dynamo lights, cup and cone bearings, and skids. Jack has been writing about and testing bikes for more than five years now, has a background working in bike shops for years before that, and is regularly found riding a mix of weird and wonderful machines. Jack can also often be seen zooming about with his partner aboard their beloved tandem, Cecil.