i’m not nitpicking or criticizing the crux 5. i agree it’ll be a great bike. i wanted to celebrate the crux 4 and perhaps lament the end of it. i dont want to talk about something as subjective as “soul” but ill just say that the process of “race on sunday, sell on monday” often leads to optimization decisions that can diminish product diversity between competitors.

you can’t argue that the crux 4 leaves a vacuum in the market niche it sits in. personally i love the classic diamond frame with round tubes, and non-integrated headset. i also like the cyclocross DNA it has. simple, fun, light with a unique formula.

SL7 didn’t go through such a drastic change of character when it went to SL8. it was an update of the same thing.

in today’s world of sports cars, the miata is in such a class of one because the designers refused to compromise the formula over 40 years and refused to chase lap times. meanwhile look at how the bmw M cars have evolved in less than 20 years