ksryder

I can't find a 1994 Riv catalog-- wasn't Grant still working for Bridgestone then? but I think Grant called them adventure bikes or all road bikes something like that.

The question was "when was the term gravel bike used". A lot of people are answering "when did gravel bikes start" which are two different things.

Like I said earlier my guess is around ~2010 depending on manufacturer but I'm willing to be wrong.

Paul Barnard

That Google trends is cool. I have never seen that before. It answers the question I asked perfectly. In 2011 I bought two Schwinn Super Sport GS frames from Nashbar for $35 apiece and built two bikes that today would be called gravel bikes. At the time I built them I hadn't heard the term.

Lazyass

BB height has been a big debate in the CX world. In the beginning they were higher because racers were using clips and straps and they would hit the ground. Nowadays some have gone lower but in general they still tend to be higher.

Berg417448

My Salsa Warbird is very light.

Spoonrobot 

I'd be pretty surprised to see a bike labeled a gravel bike in a catalog as early as 2010. I've been around the industry since 2008 and I don't recall actually seeing the term printed in a catalog until Diamondback came in 2016 with their Adventure and Gravel section. Sales reps would come in and talk and mention gravel, dirt, etc. but I never saw any printed material. Even looking now a lot of manufacturers don't label them specifically as gravel bikes or mention gravel specifically. Preferring to generalize as "every road", rough road, dirt road or other non-specific descriptors.

Trek and Performance Bike have gravel sections but neither until 2015/2016, REI does not nor does Specialized. Giant has X-Road. What other manufacturers were around in 2010 that would have a catalog with gravel bikes? I'm curious myself.

I doubt Rivendell would shoe-horn a bike specifically into one niche like a gravel bike.

79pmooney

Keep in mind that only the term "gravel" is new. Gravel bikes aren't new, at all. Look at any 1920's Tour de France photo. All those bikes were true gravel bikes. The first safety bicycle, the ancestor of what we all ride today, was a gravel bike. The newly invented road surface, "macadam" was yet to actually be used anywhere. It took pressure from the growing cycling community to start paving roads.

"If I were to find a 1(8)94 catalog it would show a "Gravel" bike by that name?" No.

My 1973 Raleigh Competiion with its geometry from decades before is a true gravel bike. That was obvious the first ride on not-so-wide tires. With big tires that fit easily I can ride it anywhere (that the very low BB allows!)

Ben

ksryder

I'll concede 2010 might be early, that was just a shot in the dark. I'd think Salsa might be one of the earliest manufacturers of any significant volume that would've used the term, so maybe start there?

Spoonrobot 

Thanks for the tip, I forgot about Salsa - that's a good brand. I'm interested in how gravel bikes got to where they are now as quite a few of them have some quirky design choices so knowledge about the past may be helpful.

nzhu

I had a CrMo gravel bike that got stolen so I got an endurance road bike (Al) and I realized I like my endurance a lot more.

HTupolev

In the past, we'd just call that a road bike. And we're increasingly heading back to it being normal: plenty of current "endurance" road bikes can fit 32mm tires just fine.

fietsbob

Cyclocross, the real races, sometimes you are faster shouldering the bike and running with it.. than riding...

so they don't bother with low gears.. either..

They go with horizontal top tubes .. my Classic AlAn , ovalized the 1" top tube in the center to make that go a little better..

cable runs on the top tube are often there, always not under the tube..





...

badger1

qft

ksryder

So now I'm curious. I couldn't find any old Salsa catalogs on the internet but Surly has all their catalogs going back to 1998. I could only make it up to 2014 because my internet connection is really slow today - but I didn't find the phrase "gravel bike" in anything up to and including 2014.

However, the ad copy for the Crosscheck -- going back all the way 1999 -- would be just as home today as it was back then: "Our true intentions for this frameset are to provide you with the core for a very aggressive, multi-purpose, off-road worthy 700c-wheeled bike".

In 2014 they specifically mention gravel roads for the crosscheck and a couple other models but they don't use the phrase "gravel bike."

As a side note: going back to the late 90s and early 2000s I'm impressed with how innovative and ahead of its time Surly was. I know they get some heat these days but they definitely had a vision that was arguably ahead of its time.

Spoonrobot 

That's great, part of what I find interesting is the same sentiment expressed below. So much of how a company presents itself and is perceived is limited to the last few years but there is so much history that sometimes it's easy to lose sight of how we got here in the first place.

Texico

Wouldn't the first "Gravel Bike" be the 2014 Raleigh Tamland that was developed with input from Guitar Ted? At least if we're talking modern marketing terms then that's the one that started the distinction of a purpose built Gravel Bike instead of using an existing cyclocross bike, right?

Lazyass

The Tamland could be. I moved to NC in 2014. I don't recall ever hearing the term "gravel bike" until I moved here. Matter of fact, around that time, I recall starting a thread asking if there were any road bikes that could fit bigger tires. What got that question in my head was an article I read in 2008 about Andy Hampstons personal bike (below). Titanium with Jack Brown 33.3c tires. I thought it was interesting that a former teammate of Greg Lemond was riding something like that.

https://www.bikeradar.com/gear/artic...anca-ti-16577/

tyrion

Bruce Gordon made his first "Rock 'n' Road" bike in 1988.


Bruce Gordon Cycles - The Unofficial Official Blog: A Brief History of the Rock 'n Road

TiHabanero

I need to throw this in about the lower BB height. When I design a bike the stand over height is a consideration. Knowing that a bike is to be outfitted with 32-40c tires I drop the BB down a centimeter or more to accommodate the appropriate stand over height for the proposed rider. Not convinced the lower BB was intentional for stability, rather I believe it is for stand over height, but the bike companies needed a way to differentiate product and fit the marketing bill for gravel bikes and use "stability" as part of the campaign to sell.

ph0rk

Like a Domane disc? Already fits that bill, and plenty light.

I have several bikes in this category. I wouldn’t ride anything less than 700x32mm tires on the road.

If you go to gravel races, you’ll see plenty of 32 and 34-35mm tires present, depending on the surface. These bikes already exist.

As for first “marketed” gravel bike, it can’t be the Tamland: the Salsa Warbird was introduced for 2013: https://salsacycles.com/culture/new_...ducing_warbird

Hiro11

I've never understood why people get so uptight about bike company marketers trying to differentiate "gravel bikes" from "cross bikes".

People seem happy to accept "endurance road" or "aero road" or "climbing bike" micro-differentiations on road bikes. People are also happy to accept the equally minor differences between "trail" bikes", "all mountain" bikes and "enduro" bikes when it comes to full suspension mountain bikes.

In contrast, bring up the relatively major difference between traditional cross bikes (racy, steep angles, high bottom brackets, 33mm tires, narrow cross gearing, weight a focus, no rack/fender mounts) and gravel bikes (often touring bike - like angles, low bottom brackets, room for larger tires, weight less of a focus, rack and fender mounts common) and people get a little twitchy.

Of course, the market for true cross race bikes is relatively small so manufacturers have made their "cross" bike look more like a "gravel" bike. Also, there are micro variations in gravel bikes with some being essentially drop bar mountain bikes, others being essentially endurance road bikes and variations therein. Overall, the label has become meaningless. The recent Trek Domane Gravel (or whatever) being a particularly cynical example of meaningless labels.

ph0rk

Categories help sell bikes. If I wanted, say, a slack head angle and three bottle cage mounts, I can probably safely ignore most cross bikes marketed as such. There is still a lot of difference between a light gravel race bike and the sort of machine you’d want to take on longer ride (I still think two bottles is nowhere near enough for rides with 50 miles between water and drop bags, so my guess is we will see the category split up in time).

That gravel bikes started to get popular while a lot of makes still sold road bikes with 25mm tires is telling, I think. Before Trek started calling the Crossrip a gravel bike they couldn’t even really categorize it well - so they just sort of lamely said it can do everything.

Kapusta

There are a lot of ways to answer this question.

The TERM "gravel bike" as a common term is pretty recent, I think well after 2010.

Technically, bikes made to handle dirt roads have been around, well, forever.

In terms of the recent popularity and marketing push, I think that would be about 10 years ago that it started to become a "thing", but took a few years to catch on.

In 2011, the idea of a "road" bike that was meant for dirt roads, or that dirt/gravel roads were a type of "road" riding was still pretty foreign to most of the cycling world. Just a fringe thing.

I remember this because I bought my 2010 Salsa Casseroll (which I consider a gravel bike despite the brakes) in early 2011. I was super stoked about having this road bike that was so capable on dirt and gravel roads, and started doing rides that combined many common road routes with many of the forest service roads all around SW Virginia. I kept blathering on how awesome it was, but found that almost nobody was interested in such a thing. Mountain bikers saw it (correctly) as road riding, and most of the serious road riders just thought of these as crappy roads to ride on (because on 23mm tires, they ARE crappy to ride on).

I bristle a little at the term "gravel" bike, because in my mind, many gravel bikes are actually "All-Road" bikes that excel on pavement, crappy pavement, and dirt/gravel roads. I've ridden road bikes for years, but after getting my Casseroll in 2011, traditional "road" bikes with racing geo and skinny tires are pretty much dead to me (see my sig).

I could be wrong about this, but I think Salsa was the first company that really pushed "gravel" as a marketing strategy. Or at least the first one that did it and had it catch on in the industry.

mstateglfr 

No idea when they hit catalogs...its 2018...catalogs are mostly online webpages now.

Gravel bikes hit the market 25+ years ago when 700c hybrids were introduced. Bianchi Project series, Trek 7xx series, Univega ViaActiva, etc. They were flat bar then and can be easily modified to fit well as drop bars now. They build into comfortable dtop bar gravel bikes.
They just werent called 'gravel bike'.

My gravel bike model was introduced a decade ago. It was described as being at home on the road or trail. Not called gravel. Huh, hadnt realized til just now.


Anyways, 2011ish the term becomes popular. Brands then scramble and introduce haphazard offerings to quence the market's thirst. Trends take over and a few years later the term becomes mainstream.


'Gravel grinding' was a regular/popular term back in the early 00s.

mstateglfr 

No.

joesch

Is trail bike also a categorization or term use ?
Perhaps gravel and CX bikes can simply be specialized trail bikes ?
Mountian bikes can handle all trails including steep declines which is why suspension was added.
Trying to help with clarifications and not confuse this conversation.