New Shimano Ultegra definitely not spotted on BMC website, nope

BMC’s fancy new Teammachine launched this week and naturally it’s also gone live on BMC’s website. Several models have the major groupset components blacked out, and it doesn’t take exceptional powers of deduction to work out that this act of MS Paint censorship is almost certainly hiding a new Shimano Ultegra groupset.

UPDATE: It’s official, Ultegra R8000 is here. Read our article Shimano Ultegra R8000 and Ultegra Di2 R8070: all you need to know to find out more.

• Hands on with Ultegra R8000: exclusive first look video
• Road bike groupsets: everything you need to know

In fact, BMC actually gives full specs for the new bikes, and the SLR01 Disc, SLR01 Disc Two, SLR02 Disc One, SLR01 Three and SLR02 One all list Shimano Ultegra in their specs, including Ultegra Di2. 

There could be an alternative explanation for this, however. It may be that BMC is catastrophically bad at graphic design and its art person decided to render the components from memory using only the fattest of brush tools.  

Or perhaps these are real images of the next generation of Ultegra, henceforth to be known as ‘the blobby groupset’. It would certainly be a departure for the brand, one that prides itself on the cleanest, most mechanically elegant designs.

Shimano’s UK distributor Madison has understandably declined to comment, but we at BikeRadar are immensely excited about a possible new groupset, blobby or otherwise.