By Sebastian Jayne
German bred, born, built and sent is Canyon’s discernibly unique take on the bicycle industry. Instead of running through multiple middle men such as importers and bike shops, Canyon ship direct to the customer. The purpose of this is to give the customer a better price than would otherwise be available for a similar spec bike through a traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ bike shop.
Canyon’s bikes are built up by hand in the German company’s factories, which gives Canyon complete control over the quality of the departing bike. The direct sale also gives the customer a direct line to the company in case of any problems.
Each Canyon is assembled by hand in Koblenz, Germany, and then test ridden.
‘Problems’ are what give people scepticism about buying direct from the manufacturer. But Canyon have developed a system of delivering a bike that is as ready to go as it can be and have included the tools necessary for the customer to do the rest. Also, the 30 day return policy helps if there is a problem you can’t fix!
The test bike for this process would be the Canyon Ultimate CF SLX DISC 9.0. A Shimano mechanically equipped road bike with hydraulic Dura Ace disc brakes designed as an all-round race bike. Disc brakes can be troublesome after a prolonged journey so I was interested to see how the Ultimate would run fresh out of the box.
Cracking the lid open revealed a snuggly fitted race bike that came out of the box as one piece. All connected by Velcro strapping and foam protective pieces.
The absence of sticky tape and zip ties that other bikes have arrived wrapped in was a welcome relief. Alongside the one-piece parts package was a box full of everything I’d need to put the bike together.
The front thru-axle, out front computer mount and assembly paste were joined by two Canyon Torque wrenches. One with a 5Nm range and a long handle and the other with a wider range of heads. The Bike Manual was up there with the thickest I have seen but contrary to most it held useful information about the final steps to getting the bike up and running.
The larger wrench worked on flex to give a reading of torque, which seemed to work well though was a bit unnerving whether it was accurate or not. Out of the few things I had to do to get the Ultimate ride ready, the headset was the trickiest. The bottom spacer had a bolt that I had no idea what it was for, but with a bit of fiddling I managed to get everything pressed into place.
The only other ‘problems’ were the front derailleur that needed a limit screw adjustment to get it shifting into the big chain ring and the valves on the tubes that were too short to get the pump engaged, which ended up being quite frustrating.
The hidden seat post clamp is neat.
As far as out of the box performance goes though, the Ultimate ticked every box. There were no problems with the brakes or cables and no real headaches from anything else.
The build process was quick and relatively painless and proved the Canyon direct method works well.