Bike of the Week | Spa Cycles Elan 725

If our last Bike of the Week was a little lacking in wheels for your liking, this latest offering will put things right.

The Spa Cycles Elan 725 is a stylish steel all-rounder from a brand that specialises in UK-friendly touring bikes replete with practical touches.

Spa has offered a titanium Elan for a while, but this steel version is more affordable, while occupying a similar niche.

Spa will build you a bike however you like, and this particular machine sports Shimano 105 disc components and some interesting aftermarket additions.

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The frame is a study in simplicity, with reassuringly old-school skinny Reynolds 725 steel tubes and fully external cables.

The bottom bracket is threaded and, in the case of this bike, it’s a square taper cartridge unit of the kind that typically outlasts the rider.

The geometry is the same as that of the existing Ti version, with 384mm of reach and a towering 603mm of stack for this 54cm bike.

It’s long and laid back, with 440mm chainstays contributing to its 1,047mm wheelbase, suggesting a stable, easygoing approach to riding

The Elan is more of an all-roader (or light tourer) than gravel grinder, but clearances are healthy and this particular bike is specced with 30mm tubeless Schwalbe G-One tyres that are equally at home on dry fireroad as they are on tarmac.

In a similarly adventurous vein, the bike is fitted with Spa’s own 46/30t cranks and these are matched to a huge 11-40t SunRace cassette.

But wait, I hear you cry, a regular Shimano 105 rear derailleur won’t like that, will it?

You’re quite right, but Spa has also fitted a Wolftooth Goatlink hanger extender, which adds the necessary clearance to allow a standard road derailleur to work with a mountain bike cassette.

A 30/40t low gear should be enough to climb just about anything short of a vertical wall, so loaded touring should present no obstacles.

You can’t miss the orange theme the Elan has going on, and much of the hue is supplied by cheerfully anodised Hope components, including the headset, skewers, seat clamp and hubs.

The appearance of quick-release skewers might raise an eyebrow incidentally, in a world now dominated by thru-axles, but they work just fine, as they have done for most of the last century. Spa does offer a thru-axle fork as an alternative, but naturally the frame is QR-only.

Those Hope hubs are laced to Kinlin tubeless alloy rims and yes, the nipples are orange too. It would be odd if they weren’t, frankly.

The Elan’s finishing kit is all FSA, with the brand’s Adventure bar offering subtly flared drops and slightly swept and flattened tops for comfort. All this makes for a bike weighing 10.4kg for a size 54 without pedals.

As built, the Elan should set you back around two grand, but that’s an estimated figure because Spa Cycles hasn’t yet finalised pricing.

The Elan 725 is expected to be available towards the end of May and, as mentioned previously, Spa will build it to your specification or you can roll your own with a frameset.