Is your choice of 2005's best team bike and best new product as wonderful as it appears on the surface? Dave Langley finds the Cervélo Soloist Carbon lives up to the hype, and displays his dedication to rigorous bike testing by taking it for a slide down the road too...

"You're not going to want to give that back." Well, yeah, whatever; the Cyclingnews guys say that to all the reviewers, right? In the case of this Cervélo Soloist Carbon, they were dead right.

Hailing from Canada, the Cervélo Soloist Carbon burst onto the scene in early-mid 2005 and has been piloted by what has emerged as the number 1 team in the pro peloton, Team CSC. The Soloist can be looked at as a high-end time-trial machine configured for road use, the result of blending the lightweight features of the Cervélo R2.5 with the aerodynamic features of the original Cervélo Soloist. It is aerodynamically engineered to slip through the air and allow classy riders such as Jens Voigt, or any rider for that matter, to extract maximum gain from their considerable efforts when "up the road".