The Marin Lombard E1 is a bike built to make your commute ‘seriously fun’ and turn your gravel rides into epic quests.
While previously the Lombard was a dedicated commuter bike, the drop bars, wide tyres and Bosch SX motor open it up to a wide range of capabilities.
The alloy frame, in which a 400Wh battery is held, has a relaxed shape and plenty of fixing points for luggage and wet-weather accessories.
At its core, this cheaper of the two Lombards is a bike built with commuting and weekend cruising as its raison d’etre, while the pricier Lombard E2 is more suited to gravel riding on chunkier dirt.
I’ve found the city streets flash by, gravel spins are dispatched with ease and it’s been a great leveller when my non-cyclist partner and I have been out and about, seeing the sights.
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Marin Lombard E1 frame details
Marin’s Series 4 Beyond Road aluminium, with its hydroformed tubing and butted profiles, is used throughout the bike's frame.
The gently dropped top tube, with braced seat tube, gives a little extra comfort space when you’re standing over the bike, while the Bosch System Controller display, with its five battery capacity bars and motor mode LEDs, sits at the front of the top tube, easily in view.
The broad down tube houses a 400Wh Bosch battery, released from the frame for charging in the house, via a neat Fidlock plastic door in the tube’s underside.
The bulge towards the bottom bracket area gives space for the mid-powered SX motor unit, on top of which the charge port is easily accessible if you can charge in place.
The rear stays are fairly svelte, with a nod to frame compliance, and help provide room for 50c tyres. There’s a neat seatstay bridge, as well as recessed bolt holes, for pannier and fender mounts.
A Universal Derailleur Hanger is a nice addition, and should future-proof the frame.
Inside the front triangle, you’ll find two sets of bottle bosses, while cables run neatly into the top of the down tube.
Further forward, the chassis is completed by a full carbon fork.
This features three mounting bolts per side, so if your intentions include lugging luggage around, plenty can be fitted up here.
Marin Lombard E1 geometry
Marin has given the Lombard a relaxed, approachable geometry, rather than anything too racy.
The size-Large bike I tested has a slack 70-degree head angle, paired with a long 415mm reach for calm handling. This, when combined with the 435mm chainstays, gives a 1,088mm wheelbase – nice and long for high-speed stability.
At 73.5 degrees, the seat angle is steep, placing your weight nicely over the bottom bracket for day-long pedalling comfort and an efficient fit.
The 607mm stack isn’t super-high; however, there’s ample steerer tube left uncut to raise the bar if you want an even more relaxed stance on the bike.
| Size | S | M | L | XL |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reach (mm) | 385 | 405 | 415 | 425 |
| Stack (mm) | 565 | 583 | 607 | 640 |
| Head tube angle (degrees) | 70 | 70 | 70 | 70 |
| Seat tube angle (degrees) | 73.5 | 73.5 | 73.5 | 73.5 |
| Seat tube length (mm) | 460 | 485 | 505 | 530 |
| BB height (mm) | 282 | 282 | 282 | 282 |
| Wheelbase (mm) | 1042 | 1069 | 1088 | 1110 |
| Chainstay (mm) | 435 | 435 | 435 | 435 |
| Top tube (mm) | 552 | 578 | 595 | 615 |
| Standover (mm) | 687 | 702 | 715 | 742 |
Marin Lombard E1 specification
The core of the bike is based around the Bosch SX motor and 400Wh battery.
This is a mid-power motor, giving up to 60Nm of torque, 600W of maximum power and up to 400% assistance, in a package that weighs around 2kg.
It’s not quite as powerful as the Performance CX motor, found commonly on electric mountain bikes, but on an electric gravel bike, that slightly lower-power option is ideal.
Its location in the middle of the frame is ideal for weight distribution, especially when heading off-road.
Torque is there to help with acceleration, and 60Nm is plenty for a gravel bike on mixed surfaces. The 600W of maximum power and 400% assistance mean that, in the right conditions, the motor will quadruple the power you're putting in, up to a maximum of 600W.
The motor has four modes, from very gentle up to a punchier turbo mode, controlled via an on-bar pair of buttons and the main System Control module in the top tube.
Shimano provides the bulk of the rest of the stop-and-go components.
On the bar, a GRX-level shift and brake lever operate a mechanical GRX 12-speed derailleur at the rear and a pair of hydraulic brakes.
To ensure the 1x12 drivetrain has plenty of range, the FSA 42t chainring is paired with a Shimano Deore 10-51t cassette.
Elsewhere, Marin’s own alloy kit finishes the build, from the cockpit to the seating area, via the rims which surround Shimano hubs.
Finally, there’s a pair of 44c Vee Tire G-Sport tyres, with a fine file tread pattern.
Marin Lombard E1 ride impressions
Given Marin’s broad use case for the Lombard, I’ve taken the bike on a wide range of rides, from country roads to gravel paths with a few commutes thrown into the mix.
I also lent the bike to my partner, someone who’s not a regular cyclist, to see how she fared while I rode my regular gravel bike on a spin through Bath’s delightful Twin Tunnels trail.
The wide 44c tyres have a low-profile file tread that rolls silently on tarmac, but manages to grab a hint of grip on tracks where it's more marginal.
They’re not mud-pluggers, nor are they going to work if you intend to take the Lombard on chunkier gravel rides.
However, at around 30psi, they offer comfort over broken road surfaces and filter out fine gravel on unpaved cycle tracks nicely. They’ll deal well enough with fine grit and non-slippery dirt too, as long as you’re not expecting to set any KOMs round the corners.
On off-road climbs, there’s just enough give and grip to prevent the rear wheel spinning – until you hit greasy rocks and roots, or slimy mud without subtlety.
The geometry suits commuting and cruising, with a relatively upright and comfortable position that keeps your eyes looking up the road, or at the scenery as you pass.
Versatility in mind
The longer, more stable geometry doesn’t give it the pin-sharp handling of a more racy bike as you twist and turn through roads or trails, but instead provides confident handling in a range of situations.
This means you can open the taps and let off the brakes without the bike feeling skittish or nervous, even when the tarmac gets damp and there are leaves covering the cycle path.
Long, fast corners are the bike’s bread and butter, where it feels it wants to hold a calm and stable line.
At the front, the carbon fork does its best to work with the tyres to filter out road and trail chatter.
However, the bars feel relatively stiff, and the bar tape is thin. Adding thicker tape would help keep your palms comfortable if you’re planning on venturing off-road more frequently.
Shimano’s brakes and gears work well. Shifting up and down the cassette, even with power being delivered by the motor, is smooth and accurate, with a light lever feel from the GRX shifters.
The brakes have ample, controllable power that makes navigating more technical terrain a little bit easier.
The textured GRX hoods felt grippy with or without gloves on, and have a shape that I found comfortable on- and off-road for prolonged periods.
Power up
The Bosch SX motor feels like a system well-matched to the Lombard’s intentions.
In its lower two power settings, the assistance is subtle. My partner found these were a great way to make the gentle climbs of our day’s outing that little bit easier, enabling her to ride alongside me without blowing a gasket.
The power delivery is smooth and subtle, too, meaning as someone who hadn't ridden drop bars or ebikes extensively, she didn’t struggle with any acceleration or handling quirks from the easy power on tap.
When we encountered steeper hills, a toggle to the higher-power modes was well within reach, and she left me for dust.
It’s a bike that has thoroughly converted her to the benefits a little electrical assistance can offer.
On soft terrain, I didn’t feel the lower power modes over-reached the traction levels on offer; however, when in the punchier modes, it became easier to overwhelm the tyres' grip.
That’s to be expected, with the torque and power levels in line with those found on lighter-weight electric mountain bikes, which come with far grippier tyres.
Fortunately, even in these higher-power modes, the feel through the cranks makes power delivery manageable.
On the road, the motor’s assistance makes ascents an easier affair.
The easier modes offer more of a gentle push, while the higher modes are much more noticeable in their assistance, with a real turn of pace possible when your own power is delivered and then amplified.
Should you wish to get deeper into the motor modes’ power outputs, they can be tweaked in Bosch’s eBike Flow App, which also offers navigation and theft-protection functionalities.
When you reach the legal maximum assistance speed (25kph in the UK), the motor’s assistance drops off.
The drop-off isn’t cliff-edge like, but you’re quite aware you’re pedalling without assistance once it happens.
While the removal of assistance exacerbates the feeling, unless you’re really coasting along above 25kph, it feels as though there’s a little extra work required to maintain speed, thanks to the internal resistance of the motor.
On the flat, the bike's 16.6kg weight doesn’t seem to impede it, but on ascents above the speed limit, you’ll notice a little extra work is needed.
As such, on my flatter gravel rides, I found myself on the motor’s limit at almost all times.
Even on the steeper climbs, so long as the terrain allows, it’s easy to keep the bike ticking towards its maximum assisted speed. On the flat, there seemed little incentive to push harder, just to cruise along at, say, 27 or 28kph.
As someone who enjoys a ‘spirited’ gravel ride, this feeling detracted slightly from my ride enjoyment in those specific situations.
Long days out
Range figures are tricky to give, because they are impacted greatly by rider weight and ride-height gain.
However, at 82kg, I would be confident of heading out on a 70km mixed-surface ride with up to 1,000m of ascent, in the motor’s Sprint mode. Doing so would get me home just before the battery dropped me into its limp mode.
As is often the case on e-gravel bikes, there’s no on-bar display with detailed battery and speed data, so it’s best paired with your bike computer if you’re heading out for longer rides.
This Sprint mode is the most dynamic of the modes (Eco, Tour+, Sprint, Turbo) tuned into the motor, and the mode that is most ‘realistic’ in ride feel.
However, I found that to make the most of the motor’s assistance – punchy power and ample torque, I needed to ride with a high cadence of 80rpm or more. Below this, the assistance is there, but not to its highest levels.
Take the bike to and from work, and there’s plenty to appreciate.
The rack and fender mounts make it a really usable machine for the drudgery of getting to and from the office with minimal stress and effort (I like getting to work in 'normal' clothes, without sweating). The removable battery also opens up the opportunity to charge at your desk.
The broad tyres are comfortable enough rolling smoothly over kerbs and mottled tarmac, while the handling is just fast enough, thanks to its short 60mm stem, to dodge potholes.
The motor makes those dashes away from the lights that little bit quicker, while when fully loaded, hills are shrugged at.
Marin Lombard E1 bottom line
The Lombard E1 has slotted easily into my daily life, a testament to the bike's ride quality.
There’s enough adjustability in fit that my partner and I were both happy to jump on it, meaning we’ve happily enjoyed riding together. With a quick spin of a few Allen keys, it’s easily transformed into a daily driver.
The pricier Lombard E2 gets chunkier tyres and a dropper post, both of which would contribute to improved off-road performance.
The only thing I’d change immediately on the E1 would be a slightly more forgiving cockpit, for my soft mountain biker’s hands.
