The G-max blog

Coralie Drouin, an engineer at the French bike company Gir’s, recently sent me a message about a new road bike that they are developing called the G-Max. The bike will be launching in September and they showed a model of the frame at the Salon du Cycle in Paris last year. The company worked with a Parisian design agency to create the frame shape, which I think looks pretty nice. Of course, the design is more than just a styling exercise. Coralie points out that they have patented several innovations on the frame, notably the BB system, which allows the user to change the location of the BB spindle.

The frame renderings immediately caught my attention, but what really interested me when I read the message was the fact that Gir’s has a blog about the development of the G-max. It is pretty cool to be able to read about the evolution of this bike from just an idea to a real product. I appreciate the fact that Gir’s is offering a glimpse into their product development process. Companies are usually very secretive about products that they have in development. They want to shield their ideas from competitors until the very last minute, but a blog like this is a great way to build excitement about a product before it is officially launched. I hope that it works out for Gir’s with the new G-Max. Thanks to Coralie for the message and the great product development blog.


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9 responses to “The G-max blog”

  1. thePig Avatar
    thePig

    Wow that frame looks great. I also checked out their blog and am really surprised by the amount of information they are sharing.

    After reading several posts I can now pretend to know something about frame design.

  2. eradler Avatar
    eradler

    I would appreciate learning more about short and long fibres and the cost of doing so 😉
    Actually I’m more in utility bicycles and would love to see the variability of the seating position on daily trips…
    Any allies helping me to proceed on this way?

  3. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    It is an interesting concept, when I originally saw the oval shape I thought they had borrowed the movement of a Wankel rotary torid through its cycle- but no. Perhaps too elegant? Anyway the interplay between the seat post and BB shell inserts gets the saddle position correct lets agrue, even the reach to the bars, but the front center dimension (BB to front axle, can suffer). All production designs suffer here, and the three sizes for all customers suffer even more compared to a frame built to fit. I don’t know if this is worth the effort. Perhaps good for making a decision on what is preferred as a final design, to be made by a guy who can cut tubes to fit.

    I also would like to see the fork offsets on those smaller bikes, the head angle gets slack as often the case to prevent toe/tire overlap with 700c wheels, here I see the design of a changing front center, assuming overlap safe in all configurations suffers.

    If the above reads too much like a design school crit, forgive me, just what i see.

  4. Ron Avatar
    Ron

    The G-Max bike : Exaggerated Serotta rear triangle, Felt fork design, and a Cervelo downtube on steroids.

    Personally, I think this is good for a track application.

    Good pictures though, and not a bad blog, although those pictures there take so much time to load for me – perhaps they can decrease the resolution?

  5. Ron Avatar
    Ron

    To add, thats an innovative BB. By saying “changing the position of the spindle”, you mean fore-aft position? Sorry, I’m not getting the picture but what about that extra clearance at the sides? And whats that block-like protrusion from the seat-tube? Something for the derailleur? For some reason, I feel deja vu writing this, like as if I saw this all this somewhere else in the past. Weird…

  6. bikesgonewild Avatar
    bikesgonewild

    …nice looking design for the most part…

    …the seat post into the top tube looks to be a concern at the front end…maybe i’m wasn’t getting a good look at it but that looks like a stress riser waiting to happen…

    …& is the seat stay into the seat tube fitted w/ a urethane bumper to take the edge off bumps ???…i perused but that kind of info wasn’t easily forthcoming…

    …bottom bracket is interesting but is it worthwhile building an adjustment into a high torque area ???…

  7. James Avatar
    James

    …bottom bracket is interesting but is it worthwhile building an adjustment into a high torque area ???…

    good question bikesgonewild. I don’t know, but I agree that it is interesting.

    Ron, yeah it is a fore/aft adjustment. See more here:

    http://bloggmax.girs.fr/en/?p=45

  8. Julien Avatar
    Julien

    Having worked on it, there are some extra information. The design has been made by Extreme Design, the industrial design team in Extreme Group. major part of the concept is from Olivier Scala, a french industrial designer. Then the modeling phase, during 2 busy weeks (Alias Studio tools)
    Cheers

  9. […] mentioned the G-max bike from Girs in a previous post. Coralie, an engineer who worked on the bike and documented its […]

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