Mavic wheels have always looked good. Simple. Across the board, low to high end, the Mavic range is distinctive and attractive. Meaning people are buying them for the looks? Well why not? With so many riders now more interested in looking good at the cafe, why have a wheel that actually performs well? And why did Mavic change the original design of the Ksyrium when it worked so well? Performance or just good marketing.....
The beginning of the "prebuilt" wheel started with the Helium, later becoming the Ksyrium for Mavic. Made famous soon there after by a certain man by the name of Lance Armstrong winning the Tour de France on them. See what publicity does, and why so many companies are pushing to have themselves included in the pro peleton? When this wheel was released it included a aluminum rim, "Zircal" spokes (also aluminum), alloy nipples and most importantly a dual bearing freehub body (bringing the total to four bearings in the rear wheel).
Fantastic design! But things started to slide in the name of weight and cost.
Mavic released a Gen II Ksyrium (one of the most popular) including a machined rim to save weight, and the dreaded single bearing freehub - FTS-L, with a plastic bush replacing the other bearing again to save weight, but also costs.
Mon Dieu! What a shambles. Service intervals went through the roof. The unmistakable "cat in the hub" high pitched scream was born, and people out for a sunday morning cruise would end up riding their bike like a fixed wheel track bike as the dry freehub would make it impossible to freewheel. Yet people continued and still continue to buy these over priced, poorly designed wheels. When a replacement spoke costs $10 and a freehub (which don't forget now has a plastic bush that wears out very quickly) costs $195 I simply can't understand why this wheel is in such high demand.
Ask any owner and they will have had one of these problems, ask any mechanic and they will tell you about the amount of maintenance needed to keep these wheels on the road. If the owners of these wheels had to take care of them and do the work themselves to keep them true, stop the spokes and nipples bonding together or constantly lubricate the freehub, they would never have bought them.
With Mavic recently announcing the re-introduction of the "FTS-X" system in their highend freehub bodies (rejoice!) it will stop the hunt for the old dual bearing system hub bodies. But it wont stop the aluminum spokes and nipples bonding over time, the ride quality being absolutely crap (stiff yes), the rims filling with water in the rain and it certainly won't make one of the least aerodynamic wheels on the market more aero.
Speaking of which, the new R-Sys wheel, with fat, round carbon spokes, how much drag are they trying to create? And how many people have these wheels killed or injured? We can thank the common sense Mavic showed issuing a world wide recall on the front wheel. Too little too late for Karl Menzies and other guinea pigs in the pro peleton.
So next time you think of wheels, think anything other than Mavic. You can certainly find better value, performance, weight, ride quality, serviceability and aerodynamics in the multitude of brands out there. But I can hear you thinking it now....."yeh but they just don't look as cool".
