The new Eddy Merckx 525R shows that the reinvigorated brand is a cutting-edge race bike maker that does justice to its founder’s name. It's the only aero-race bike I’ve loved riding all day every day, because its ride position isn’t designed for the caricature road racer.
The Eddy Merckx 525 has historically been the eponymously named brands pure-bred race bike, named after the founders insurmountable 525 professional victories.
I’ve found the 525R to be everything I’d want of an aero race bike; its devastatingly rapid, light, and handles with a sharpness that makes every ride a fun filled speed fest.
It's helped by a more accommodating ride position, which suggests Merckx is onto something with this approach.
The 525R is undoubtedly a race bike, but it’s the first race bike since Giant’s TCR and Cannondale’s Super Six Evo that I’d happily live with as a daily ride.
The big difference is that the 525R is an aero bike, but where it differs from the ‘pro race’ competition is in how you sit on the bike. It’s long but not a stretch; the front end racy but not slammed to an extreme.
My overriding feel is a bike that’s simply well thought out. It’s for riders who like to go fast, and push the power, but not at the expense of relative comfort. I wonder if more race bikes will be designed this way going forward.
The shape of things to come?
When you think about it, race bike geometry is basically unchanged since Eddy Merckx’s heyday, but the bikes themselves are radically different.
We are now riding road bikes with tyres that are nigh-on twice as wide as the 18mm tubular tyres Merckx raced on. They also have disc brakes, shorter cranks, more than twice the gear range, power meters, carbon parts, and so on. So why has the humble bicycle geometry not changed with the times too?
That’s what the design team at the Belgian Cycling Factory (owners of Merckx, but also Ridley and Nukeproof) thought.
It saw that pro riders across road and gravel were shifting their saddle position as far forward as possible to get themselves positioned over the cranks (short or long) for optimal power transfer. They were doing this, though, while also dealing with the limitations of classic frame geometry.
With the 525R, Merckx has steepened the seat angle yet kept the top tube lengths the same as it otherwise would have been. This results in the long reach so favoured by pros to get into their aero positions, without resorting to excessive stem lengths and extreme angles.
Most aero road bikes still use the classic 73/73 head tube and seat tube angles as their basis, but Merckx has shifted the 525R to a more forward position and taken note of the UCI relaxing the 5cm saddle tip to bottom bracket centre rule down to zero.
This pushes the rider forward and effectively lengthens the reach which in turn opens up your hip angle, a change bike fitters look to make for more efficient power transfer. (The Factor One has a similar geometry.)
In theory, this means you don’t compromise the handling in pursuit of straight-line speed. After all, isn’t that the end goal of every bike designed to go fast?
Eddy Merckx 525R performance
The 525R is a wonderful companion over fast undulating rides. Let’s put aside the progressive geometry for a moment. It’s a light-feeling bike, the handling is quick but not nervous, and the frame stiffness delivers big rewards when sprinting out of the saddle.
When you combine that with a forward-positioned geometry, which in old school terms we’d call being ‘on the rivet’, so called because leather saddles would have a rivet holding the cover in place on the tip of the nose, it makes for a bike that’s both rapid to accelerate and efficient at holding the speed you’ve generated. The fit also meant I felt more comfortable holding a more aero position either on the hoods or in the drops.
The 525R is very much a race bike, and it is fittingly stiff. Yet it’s not uncomfortable and the ride position isn’t a strain, so it's not dissimilar to aero endurance bikes, like the new Canyon Endurace SLX or Ribble Ultra Road.
Usually, I’d talk about a race bike in terms of being exciting, rapid, and responsive. The 525R has all those qualities, but the overriding quality is its efficiency. Every ounce of power I put into the cranks felt like it was driving me forward, easily delivering the sensation of being on top of a gear and everything feeling like its flowing. I felt that way from the initial pedal strokes to the most challenging of climbs.
This build with a tight 11-30 cassette probably wouldn’t be my first choice, though – for anyone. While the strongest riders might be able to deal with it, and the closer gear ratios are nice to use on the flat, most will be better off with wider ratios. Happily, Merckx offers a bike builder option on its website. I would dip in and broaden the gear range for a starter.
Elsewhere, the contact points are good. The SLR Boost shape is one of my favourites. It combines a short/broad shape with just the right balance of padding where it's needed.
Merckx has embraced the narrow bar trend, but it hasn’t gone to the extremes of some brands. My large test bike got a 120mm effective stem length combined with a 39cm wide bar. I’d prefer a few centimetres more width, but it doesn’t have the shoulder crunching narrowness of some of its rivals. Thankfully, it will cost you nothing to switch the bar width in Merckx's online bike builder.
The 34mm tyre clearance is good for a race bike, and very much in line with the competition. The Tour de France-winning Colnago Y1RS and the Specialized Tarmac SL8 only have room for 32mm tyres. The Giant TCR has 33mm, and the Madone has 32mm (with a generous 6mm of clearance all round).
The rims of road bike wheels and road bike tyres are still getting wider, so I would like the 525R to have more clearance. But there does appear to be more room in the bike's frame, so perhaps Merckx is just being conservative.
The 525R offers solid value. It costs €6,999 with Ultegra Di2, carbon wheels, and carbon cockpit. The equivalent specification Cervélo S5 is priced at £9,250 / €9,990 / $10,100. A Specialized Tarmac SL8 Pro with Ultegra Di2 is £7,249 / $8,499 / €8,999.
Canyon’s comfortable race bike the mash-up of endurance comfort and race bike geometry Endurace CFR starts at £8,500 / $10,499 / $9,000 for the Dura-Ace Di2 model. A Merckx 525R with Dura-Ace Di2 and DT Swiss ARC1400 wheels costs £9,499 / €10,499.
Eddy Merckx 525R geometry
| | xs | s | m | l |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Max saddle height | 770 | 785 | 805 | 880 |
| Seat tube | 480 | 495 | 515 | 540 |
| Top tube | 525 | 545 | 565 | 585 |
| Head tube | 125 | 140 | 160 | 185 |
| Seat angle | 74.5 | 75 | 75 | 76 |
| Head angle | 73 | 73 | 73 | 73 |
| Chainstay | 407 | 407 | 407 | 407 |
| BB drop | 75 | 75 | 75 | 75 |
| Wheelbase | 964 | 990 | 1011 | 1043 |
| Standover | 698 | 713 | 732 | 756 |
| Reach | 377 | 398 | 413 | 437 |
| Stack | 535 | 550 | 569 | 593 |
Eddy Merckx 525R bottom line
The Mercx 525R is the best aero road bike I’ve ever ridden, simply because it’s not as uncompromising as a typical aero road bike of recent vintage.
In fact, it almost defies categorisation. If this was pitched to me as an endurance bike, I’d accept it as that, given its still-racy geometry is offset by the accommodating ride. If it was pitched as a pure-bred race bike, I’d be cool with that too – it's stiff, responsive, fast handling, and above all very fast and efficient-feeling.
Is it perfect? Well not quite, the 34mm tyre clearance seems conservative for a bike that’s so good in a myriad of conditions and on a variety of roads. With the major tyre brands now offering their best road tyres in 35mm or bigger I think this 525R with fast 35mm rubber would be unbeatable over the classic’s cobbles.
Also, and this is very much personal, Merckx has chosen to go with narrow bar widths as the current trend demands. I have broad shoulders and feel cramped on narrow bars.
For the state of play in aero race bikes right now I think Merckx, like its eponymous founder, has a huge lead.
Specification
- Weight: 7.87kg (Large)
- Frame: HM Carbon
- Fork: Full carbon
- Gears: Shimano Ultegra Di2 (52/36, 11-30), 170mm cranks
- Brakes: Shimano Ultegra hydraulic disc (160/140 rotors)
- Wheels: Forza Skiron CR38 with DT Swiss 350 hub set
- Tyres: Vittoria Corsa Pro 30c TLR
- Saddle: Selle Italia Boost SLR Manganese
- Cockpit: Forza Nimbus Pro 40cm outside to outside, 120mm equivalent stem
