The latest Colnago C-Series road bike keeps the handmade-in-Italy soul intact while adding more tire clearance, cleaner integration, and a smoother ride for riders who want heritage without sacrificing modern speed.
What Is The Colnago C72?
This is the next chapter in Colnago’s storied C-Series, the line that has long stood as the brand’s handmade, high-end expression of road-bike craft. It is still built in Italy. It still uses Colnago’s signature modular construction. And it still looks like a Colnago in the way only a C-bike can. But this time around, the old-world recipe gets a few meaningful updates: more tire clearance, an integrated storage compartment, revised geometry, a new cockpit, and a noticeably more forgiving attitude toward real-world roads.
While the C-Series has always traded on prestige, craftsmanship, and ride feel, the road beneath high-end bikes has changed. Riders are going faster on wider tires.
Made In Italy – Seven Parts
At its core, the C72 is still very much a C-Series Colnago. That means the frame is built from seven carbon parts joined together rather than formed as a single traditional monocoque. It is a construction method Colnago has used for years, and it remains one of the biggest things separating the C-bike line from the rest of the premium road market.
This time, though, Colnago is leaning into that identity even more. Rather than trying to hide the joins, the new C72 makes the lugged construction part of the visual story. The transitions between sections look deliberate and crisp, giving the frame a sculpted, almost tailored look. It is one of those rare cases where the frame details feel less like an engineering compromise and more like design flex.
Still A Race Bike
It is still a race-bred road bike that carries performance geometry. It still looks fast leaning against a wall. But Colnago has clearly opened the door to a broader kind of speed here. The bike now clears up to 35mm tires, which is a big move for a flagship road model with this kind of pedigree. That is enough room to make the C72 far more versatile than older C-bikes without dragging it into gravel-bike cosplay.
That added tire room also comes with a smoother overall ride. Colnago says the frame improves compliance, especially at the rear end, to make the bike more comfortable and more composed on rough surfaces.
That sounds like marketing copy until you look around the road world and realize nearly every premium performance bike is inching in the same direction. Wider tires are faster on rough roads. More control means less fatigue. Less fatigue means you are still making power when the ride gets long and the road gets rough.
This is not Colnago going soft. It is Colnago catching up to what fast road riding actually feels like now.
Hidden Storage C-Series
Yes, the C72 has storage, and honestly, Colnago handled it better than we expected.
The new bike gets an integrated downtube storage compartment, opened via a twist-tab setup at the bottom of the tube. The bottle cage lifts away to reveal the compartment inside, a smart, clean solution on a bike that could have looked silly if the storage had been handled poorly.
Instead, it is subtle enough to stay out of the way visually, but useful enough to matter once you actually start riding the thing. Tube, CO2, tool, maybe a tiny emergency snack if you’re the type who likes to pretend you won’t need one. It is one of those features that feels slightly unromantic on a hand-built Italian superbike until you use it once and immediately decide it should be on more road bikes.
New Cockpit And More Fit Flexibility
Up front, Colnago gives the C72 a new CC.02 integrated cockpit, which replaces the previous setup with a lighter, more refined bar-and-stem combo. Colnago says it trims 15 grams over the older unit and is shaped for a more aggressive hand position and better brake control in the drops.
That sounds like a small detail until you remember how much the front end can change a bike’s feel. On a premium road bike, small front-end changes are usually the difference between “pretty good” and “this thing absolutely rips.”
Colnago has also tweaked the geometry with a higher stack-to-reach ratio, giving riders a little more setup flexibility and a slightly more relaxed fit window than the more aggressive V5Rs. That does not suddenly turn the C72 into a grand-fondo machine, but it should make it easier to build the bike into something that feels properly fast.
That is probably the smartest kind of update Colnago could have made. The riders shopping for this bike still want performance. They just do not all want to feel like they are trying out for Roubaix every time they leave the house.
Lighter Than The C68
Colnago says the unpainted C72 frame in size 485 weighs 895 grams, 30 grams lighter than the outgoing C68. The complete bike can reportedly hit 6.8kg with the right build.
Those are healthy numbers, but this is not one of those bikes that lives or dies by being the lightest thing on the sales floor. The C-Series has always been about something a little more layered than that. Ride quality, construction, feel, brand heritage, and the particular satisfaction of owning a bike that still gets built with some actual romance baked into it.
The weight drop is welcome. The bigger story is that Colnago found a way to make the bike more modern without sanding off its personality.
A Price To Match
None of this comes cheap, obviously. The C72 lands firmly in the “if you have to ask…” section of the road-bike world, with pricing that matches its handmade, Italian-built, flagship status. That is not going to shock anyone shopping for a C-Series Colnago. Exclusivity has always been part of the pitch, and Colnago is not suddenly pretending otherwise.
If anything, the C72 doubles down on that by making the bike more useful without sacrificing its uniqueness.
Colnago C72 Models & Prices
- Frame kit: £6,299 / €5,940 / $8,535
- Shimano Dura-Ace + ENVE SES 4.5 wheels: £14,999 / €15,900 / $20,324
- Campagnolo Super Record 13s + Bora Ultra WTO wheels: £14,999 / €15,400 / $20,324
- Shimano Dura-Ace + Fulcrum Sharq 57 wheels: £13,299 / €14,200 / $18,020
- SRAM Red AXS + ENVE SES 4.5 wheels: £16,299 / €16,600 / $22,085
Availability — 60 days from ordering
Colnago.com
