Cannondale has today launched an all-new version of its long standing CAAD alloy road bike, now up to its 14th iteration, with a lineage that can be traced back to the Saeco days. The latest iteration, by the silhouette at the very least, looks to hark back to days gone by when seat stays met horizontal top tubes and the thought of ‘aero socks’ would get you laughed out of the club ride. Unusually, compared to most new bikes, the latest CAAD14 is actually heavier than the outgoing model, though aluminium doesn’t have quite the same performance tweaks that carbon does in terms of layup tweaks and reduction in resin usage. This has been offset by some much needed upgrades to bring the platform, which was beginning to look quite long in the tooth, kicking and screaming into the modern age, with wider tyre clearance, internal routing, and a good old fashioned BSA threaded bottom bracket.
Key updates
From a silhouette standpoint, the thing you’ll notice is that the bike looks all-new. The seat stays are back up to where the top tube joins the seat tube, and the top tube itself appears to be nearly totally horizontal, even sloping slightly down towards the head tube in some angles, but I suspect that’s just a trick of perspective and the tapering of the tube playing tricks on me. This does mean you’re going to get less seatpost stick-out, which will impact compliance, but the seatpost is a standard 27.2 arrangement, and the tyre clearance has been uprated to 32mm with 4mm of room either side, up from 30mm on the old version. In practice, this means, with a relatively stiff set of wheels, you could potentially accommodate a 35 if you don’t mind risking the paint (or clear lacquer). The frame is now UDH compatible, and no longer will anyone be put off by a press-fit bottom bracket, as the CAAD14 is back to a sensible, easy to live with BSA threaded system. The new frame does weigh slightly more than the old model, likely due to the stays and top tube changing in geometry, meaning there’s just more metal, to the tune of 228g for a painted vs painted scenario, or 98g if you’re comparing one of the raw frames with a painted CAAD13.
The other key modernisation is the move to full internal routing, with the brake hoses running through the Momo design cockpit we first saw on the previous generation SuperSix Evo in higher-tier models, and on lower-tier options, the hoses route externally to the bars before snaking into the frame under the stem in a separate cockpit system. In terms of geometry there are tweaks but nothing drastic. The seat tube is 2cm longer, and the top tube is 2mm longer. The head tube angle remains the same at 73º (for a size 56), though the seat tube has been steepened by 0.4 degrees. The bottom bracket is 3mm lower, too, but perhaps the biggest change is at the back end with 7mm shorter chainstays. This is offset by a 3mm longer reach and a 5mm lower stack height, which somewhat mirrors the stack changes made to the new SuperSix Evo. All in all, everything is just a hair more racy, but not to such a degree that it would handle wildly differently compared to the 13. These geo tweaks and the now internal nature of the cables point to the CAAD14 being more of a race-oriented beast, but sadly, the mudguard mounts that made the previous CAAD such a capable all-rounder on paper have been cast asunder in the name of speed, presumably.
Builds and pricing
The CAAD14 is available in three full build options, as well as a frameset. At the top of the pyramid is the crit bro special, featuring a 1x SRAM Force groupset, a raw, clear lacquered frame, Reserve wheels and an integrated cockpit. Beneath this is an SRAM Rival 2x build with DT Swiss wheels, and then a Shimano 105 build with Cannondale in-house wheels. A top-spec model will set you back £7,500 or $7,499, down to £4,250 or $3,999 and then £2,995 or $2,499 for the lowest tier model. A frameset will cost you £1,750 or $1,799
Opinion - This bike was close to perfect but they took away the bloody fender mounts
You get quite numb to new bikes in this job. The sea of lighter, stiffer, faster, and 2w faster at 85kmh begins to wash over you, but this latest CAAD actually got me excited. I love new aero bikes, but the bikes I actually own are decidedly not aero - I favour practicality, durability and versatility. My own road bike, now somewhat transmogrified into a flat bar hill climb machine, is a simple alloy crit bike with a threaded bottom bracket and solid geometry, and on paper this latest CAAD could have been my perfect bike, but for some mad reason, the designers decided to dispense with the mudguard mounts. Yes, Cannondale is an American brand, and I’ve no doubt that the media shots were taken in LA on a beautiful sunny day, but it’s also a global brand, and people buy these bikes in places that are more at risk of flooding than they are of being engulfed by truly devastating wildfires. This is a non-aero bike made of metal. Weight isn’t the selling point, and it’s already heavier than its predecessor, so why not just slap a couple of bosses in the seat stays, the BB, the fork crown and the dropouts? It would have made no real impact on the performance and would have turned the CAAD14 from a crit-focussed summer bike to a genuine all-season all-rounder. The larger clearances mean you could have got a decent set of guards in too, kept the racy handling through the winter, and still be able to fit relatively large rubber. I’m actually, genuinely quite annoyed by this decision, and I have had both a hearty breakfast and two coffees, so I’m not just hungry.
I think part of the issue for me is that everything else is, finally, normal. There’s a threaded bottom bracket, the wheels are normally dished, you can use any stem, the front wheel isn’t a roller blade, there’s no mad innovations, just a sensible alloy bike with geo figures that look like it’ll ride brilliantly, and large tyres to soak up the frame stiffness and reduced seatpost stick-up. The other factor, that requires you to look past the ‘ooh isn’t it shiny’ raw alloy crit bike (but let’s be real, who is racing crits seriously and not opting for an aero machine, making this… cosplay?) is the fact that the decision to omit genuinely useful mudguard hardware does the lower tier builds out of them too. I’ve written before that I think the £1,000-ish bike space is the most important, as it sets new riders up for a lifetime of enjoyment. The 105-equipped CAAD14 is going to be a great many riders’ first ‘proper’ road bike. It’ll probably be commuted on and ridden on club rides at the weekend. It’s a gateway drug, and while the threaded BB certainly helps, the lack of fender mounts should rightly be a turnoff for anyone who lives anywhere that has a proper winter. Clip on mudgards are, to be frank, really s**t, and if the Specialized Allez (and even the Enve Melee for heaven’s sake) can offer a few bosses then the CAAD should too.
