Giant 2012 road launch

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Giant's revamped TCR Advanced SL retains its predecessor's confident handling and comfortable, lively ride but drops heaps of unneeded grams. Claimed weight for a bare frame is now just 820g - a reduction of 148g from last year.(Image credit: Jonny Irick)

Giant's 2012 road bike range doesn't present the obvious visual changes that one usually expects from a newly overhauled collection – visually speaking, the general design language is still present from the current family and changes are mostly subtle below-the-skin tweaks instead of wholesale changes in direction. But it's unlikely most consumers will be upset.

If our hunch is correct, you'll likely see more manufacturers heading that way, too, as there's also minimal impact on consumers in terms of component compatibility. Giant of course will offer its own stems with a 1 1/4in clamp but other models already exist from Ritchey, Syntace, and FSA (PRO has stems in the works, too). Interestingly, Giant has also managed to fit the bigger fork in the same head tube as before, meaning that current owners with older OverDrive front ends can upgrade simply by swapping out their fork, upper headset hardware, stem, and spacers.

Giant sloughed off those extra grams through several engineering strategies. Switching to Toray's stiffer T-800 fibers required less material to achieve the same benchmarks, a new "Continuous Fiber Technology" lopped off 100g by utilizing a greater proportion of uninterrupted plies and fewer small swatches of carbon, and a number of previously aluminum bits have been changed to carbon fiber, including the rear dropouts, the bottom bracket sleeve, and new direct drop-in headset bearing seats.

The second-tier TCR Advanced is intended as the "workhorse racer" of the range, subbing in a conventional telescoping aero-profile seat post in lieu of the SL's more flexible integrated mast (supposedly sacrificing 15 percent in rider comfort as a result) and Toray's T-700 fibers. Giant also sticks with aluminum for the dropouts and bottom bracket sleeve and uses a more conventional modular monocoque construction technique.

Filling out the TCR range is the standard TCR Composite, which essentially borrows the 2011 TCR Advanced mold but swaps in a cheaper grade of carbon fiber to keep costs low (Giant global communications manager Andrew Juskaitis says complete bikes will start at around US$1,500). Despite the inviting price point, claimed frame and fork weights are still a very reasonable 1,070g and 499g, respectively, though at this level Giant will stick to the original OverDrive front end with its more conventional 1 1/8-to-1 1/2in steerer.

The OverDrive2 front end, MegaDrive down tube shaping, and PowerCore extra-wide press-fit bottom bracket design make their way over as well but the frame shape has overall been tweaked to lend more vertical movement and a generally smoother glide over rough ground. Wispy climber-types will be especially interested to hear that the Defy Advanced SL will actually be Giant's lightest road frame for 2012 with a claimed weight of just 799g plus 330g for the matching fork.

Changes to the second-tier Defy Advanced mirror those in the TCR family, moving down a step in Toray's carbon fiber family to bring costs down to a more realistic level, swapping in a conventional telescoping aero-profile seat post, and swapping in aluminum instead of carbon fiber bits. Claimed frame weight for the 2012 model still drops a whopping 19 percent from 1060g to 894g, though, and the matching OverDrive2 fork is pegged at 356g.

DT Swiss provides its star ratchet rear hub guts, axle and bearing technology, and Tricon straight-pull bladed stainless steel spoke anchoring systems but Giant has specced its own hub shells with wider flange spacing for better lateral stiffness. Out back, Giant has even gone with a highly asymmetrical rim profile to even out the spoke tension between the driveside and non-driveside and made the bold decision to offer only Shimano/SRAM compatibility, allowing the driveside flange to move outboard by 2mm.

Riders seeking a bit more speed can instead opt for the Giant P-SLR1 Aero set, which features the same hubs and rim width as the non-Aero wheels but a more aggressive 49mm depth to help cut through the wind. Even so, claimed weight is still just 1,575g for the pair but the drilled rims and internal nipples mean that the P-SLR1 Aero wheels will only be tubeless compatible after adding an airtight rim strip.