2018 Pinarello Gan S Ultegra Bike

The Pinarello GAN S is a workhorse of a bike. It comes, with the addition of Easy-Fit, in fourteen sizes, fitting everyone from the small to the tall. The frame design is also similarly wide-ranging, taking its cues from the Dogma F8 and nearly identical to the GAN, GAN RS, and GAN Disk.

Pinarello starts with the Dogma when designing the GAN series bikes. The S takes the shaping and geometry of the F8 and builds it with Torayca T700 Carbon Fiber. The lower-modulus mix is more durable. But to get to the same stiffness, Pinarello needed more material. The resulting generous cost savings means a little added weight.

More importantly, the frame is shaped like the F8. You can see it in the extended head tube, the way the fork crown nestles in a notch in the down tube, the aero fork legs, the FlatBack down and seat tubes and the shorter, lower seat stays. And includes the aero carbon-fiber seatpost. The shaping also owes to the need to make the bike stiff and comfortable. A problem with traditional airfoil tube shaping is that they make a bike vertically stiff and laterally compliant, the reverse of what people need. By shortening the profile of the down and seat tubes, which Pinarello calls FlatBack profile, they still have vertical give. And by cutting the tubes off at their wide point, there is still plenty of lateral stiffness to fight pedal forces. And this is before we get into Pinarellos traditional asymmetric tube designs, where they have already built in resisting pedaling forces.

The F8 has a geometry built for light super flexible riders. The GAN S is built for the rest of us, similar position, just with more stack and less reach: its easy to get comfortable and feel powerful on the GAN thanks to the fact your bars dont have to be so low. There are fourteen sizes to choose from, so you can easily find one that fits. In terms of tubing shapes and geometry, it is identical to the GAN, GAN RS, and GAN Disk, with the only difference being the grade of carbon-fiber employed.