Ok, I know what you are going to say, but I have my reasons, and I understand the drawbacks. A carbon cross bike will be a HUGE upgrade over my current cross bike and according to a Strava'd test road ride on a poorly fit, too small Specialized Carbon Crux Pro (with a very nice road wheelset), a pretty durn good upgrade on my road bike too. I see people discussing this in the forums, but it tends to be about BB drop or non-carbon frames or other. I'm looking to understand which fairly common brand carbon cross bike is going to ride pretty well as a road bike. I get that I may want to change out cranks and need to adjust brakes and have less road braking power. I'm looking at relatively common brands because I'm going to be looking for something used to maximize groupo for buck and so I can then afford a nice second set of road rims. And no, I can't really go test them. I live in a smallish city where most stores only carry a couple of cross bikes and often not in my size (my current road and cross bikes are 54 cm). The bikes I usually see for sale are Redline Conquest Pro Carbon, Specialized CruX Pro Carbon, Lapierre Carbon, Trek Cronus Carbon (sometimes), Orbea Carbon, Cannondale Cross X Carbon. Anyone have some somewhat objective stance on which framemaker is going to replicate a fairly aggressive road geometry? Or maybe just any nice carbon cross bike that has been professionally fit will do it?
Thanks for any input!