Josh Weinberg, Dave Rome, Iain Treloar
Like a lot of people, I’ve been on a polished components journey over the past few years. The starting point was some shiny silver White Industries hubs maybe a decade ago, but the curve has steepened: on recent builds, I found myself speccing a polished Velo Orange Grand Cru headset, a Ritchey classic cockpit, and at some point – before I even really noticed it happening – I was researching which oven cleaner is the best to strip cheap black anodised components on my basket bike to a polished finish.
At some point along the way, I found myself becoming curious about why this was so – the sociological factors that led to me suddenly getting drawn, magpie-like, to the shiny things after years of being quite happy with black on black on black. But I also wondered what broader trends this revealed of the cycling industry – why polished silver seems to be making a comeback, why now, what complexities it introduces in the manufacturing process, and what made it go away in the first place.
Cue a new arrival
Late last year, at the Bespoked Handmade Bicycle Show in London, there was one product launch that seemed to stand out head and shoulders above the rest – doubly noteworthy at this glitzy show, given the product was neither range-topping or luxurious. Shimano’s Cues range – its utilitarian, accessible low-end groupset – had sported an all-black appearance for the duration of its existence, but that was about to change. For the first time, key components were being released in a very shiny, polished aluminium finish.
There was some precedent for this before from Shimano. The company’s gravel GRX groupset had received a similar (limited-edition) treatment in 2022, provoking a similar response from swathes of the cycling world (namely, “oh my goodness I want this now”). The GRX release was an eyecatching exception rather than a signal of something more permanent – the muted palate of black persists in the GRX range, and the polished silver Cues groupset also seems to be an exception to the rule.
Unless, of course, it isn’t. Other big brands are easing in silver graphics and highlights – like SRAM’s current Red groupset, which despite a largely carbon fibre construction, features chrome decals; the company also uses silver chainrings for some of their mountain bike range. Other recent clear examples come from the likes of Roval and Enve, both now using polished silver hubs in their flagship road wheels.
You could argue, alongside these examples, that the arrival of two polished groupsets from Shimano – the cycling industry’s biggest manufacturer – tells us something meaningful, both in the existence of the products and in the wildly enthusiastic responses that they provoked: that there is a growing desire for polished aluminium components, which broadly fell out of favour over the past couple of decades and now seem to be making a return.
A bit of history
Since the birth of the road groupset, most of its constituent parts came in one colour-scheme only – polished silver aluminium – which reflected the materials that they were made of, and seemed to complement the (metal) frames that they were invariably mounted onto. That was status quo for decades, but would eventually change. The emergence of carbon fibre as a framebuilding material ushered in a new era that saw polished aluminium begin to fall out of fashion as an aesthetic; in the Shimano road range, Dura Ace 7800 (released in 2004) was the last polished aluminium groupset, with most other tiers throughout the range following suit.
For a time at the turn of the last decade, the company’s 105 and Ultegra level components were issued in a choice of finishes; a sort of matte grey, blueish tinted silver, and anodised black. Now, it’s variations of dark grey or black all round, suggesting that the numbers – either from the OEM market or from the consumer end, or both – didn’t add up to keep producing such finishes at scale. And with polished aluminium falling firmly out of fashion on the groupset side, finishing kit also starting to favour muted, dark tones to match: seatposts and handlebars, pedals and hubs.
It’s a similar story in the groupset world over at Campagnolo and SRAM. For the Italian brand, the emergence of carbon fibre in the cycling industry led to carbon fibre lever blades and cranks, which seemed to match better with black aluminium; a few polished Campy groupsets were available into the last decade, but have also since been discontinued. For the newish kid on the block, SRAM, the landscape was already skewed in a carbon and black direction from the time the company entered the road groupset market in 2006. But there have been tentative signals that even they aren’t necessarily ruling out a bit of deviation away from that template: a limited release in the last year, the company’s 1987 Eagle Transmission, brought a bit of polished flair to the mountain bike world.
A polished alternative
With the mainstream market setting the general direction, it was up to niche brands and those that sit in the middle ground – big-small brands, or maybe small-big brands, like Chris King, Ritchey and White Industries, among others – to offer an alternative. While these brands operate on a much smaller scale than the big groupset manufacturers, they are each influential in their own space, with products informing counter-cultural trends that occasionally swing back to the mainstream.
Ritchey’s Classic range brings a gleaming polished finish to contact points like handlebars, stems and seatposts, as well as wheelsets; Chris King and White Industries offer silver in hubs, headsets and bottom brackets, along with an array of coloured finishes. Between them, with Shimano and SRAM offering the occasional limited edition groupset – alongside polished standalone components, like Madrone’s rear derailleur – there are now options for a complete polished build. And at high profile bike shows, it seems like that’s something we’re increasingly seeing. I was curious about the extent to which this apparent shifting of the landscape for polished components actually measured up to the reality as seen by the brands themselves – whether there had been a substantial uptick in demand, or whether it’s a bit of a construct of social media, and actual media.
From Shimano’s perspective, a spokesperson for the company said that they’d been caught off guard by the enthusiastic response to the polished silver Cues and GRX components. “Honestly, we have received more orders than expected, and we were surprised by the strong demand for this polished finish,” they told Escape Collective, but said that “at this moment, there are no concrete plans” for polished components to become a regular part of the range. Nonetheless, the door seems open for that to change in the future: “if customer demand continues to be strong, we may consider expanding this finish to other lineups in the future,” Escape was told.
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