I love it, it's been in development for a while, Nick hates Cannondales.

It looks like a mini-Rush. 

I remember the days when my 100mm suss bike weighed 35lbs

18lbs!...I've had curry's bigger than that..

Cannondale's French warranty terms

"Damage caused by normal wear as a result of fatigue are not covered. Fatigue failure is a symptom of wear  due to use. It's a form of wear. See section A"

They aren't called "crack n' fail" for nothing. And when they do crack n' fail their warranty clarly states the frame isn't covered. The other conditions are frankly ridiculous too.

Why did you need a new frame then Karlos?

That's a long and complex story, down to my LBS not knowing diddly-squat about the frame, in the end I got a new frame and the old one turned out to be fine but they'd already given me the new frame. I thought the swing arm was out of line a few mm, turned out that it was within their tolerances.

All I'm saying is that their current line up of bikes are very good and solid IMO, their bad rep comes from the late 90 through to 03ish when they were venturing into carbon (Raven etc) and lots of frames split in two! Also their lightweight Alu XC were brittle back then. I think I've only seen one broken/cracked Prophet since it's first production in 05.

Surely one is too many.......

*fans flames*

All big manufactures will have failures, Cannondale just have a reputation for being worse than most, but like DK says its seems to be in the past.

03ish. That's not long ago and well into the company's history. Who's to say that their latest offering is going to be as reliable you claim the Prophet to be or as unrelible as you admit their earlier bikes were?

Either way, I'd rather buy a Trek or a Spesh and know they'll replace it with something equivalent for years.

Good choice as it's a fair bet that the Trek will need replacing several times

FWIW personally I've had good service from Cannondale Europe though I have heard bad stories, though no more than any other bike manufacturer.

John,  I suspect they've just built this frame so light they are basically saying you are buying it at your own risk and expense of it failing, don't call them.

Which is fair enough,  if your the kinda weight weenie that wants to shave weight for the sake of durability.

Truth be told, a lot of warranties read like that - seen a few for high end mtbs that basically don't cover them if used off-road.

Any decent manufacturer (and that includes Cannondale) will look at each case on its merit, and most likely replace even if the warranty says they don't have to. Frames snapping is bad publicity and in the long run it pays to shut the unhappy customer up.

The reason the warranty is worded that way is because it does allow them to refuse to replace the obvious pisstakes without having to prove it really failed because the owner tried a 20 gap jump on their lightweight XC bike......

I see you've fully understood the Cannondale terms and conditions then Dylan.

A couple of case histories from my triathlon club:

Laurent broke his Cannondale road frame at the bottom of the seat stay. A classic fatigue failure on a not very old bike. He ended up buying a Look to replace it.

Another Laurent broke his S-works Tarmac seat tube (probably due to overtightening of the seat clamp bolt if you ask me). He took it back to the shop not really expecting much. They sent a pic to Spesh by e-mail who agreed to replace the frame within minutes. As the dealer had an S-works Tarmac SL in stock Spesh said to give him that if he wanted it.

Spesh do tend to really not care ( not about the customer,  but about giving frames away ), it's only a frame they must make them for 20p or something really, so it's not a case of a Dale being really bad, but Spesh being really good.

Personally wouldn't touch a Dale, and this is one of the reasons I'm thinking about going over to Spesh, so you can understand why Spesh do it.

Like Dylan said, and further to what I said - neither bike would be covered under their respective warranties per se.

Specialised would just rather replace and maintain the good will than argue. A happy rider on a nice S-Works is a great mobile billboard!

Cannondale France at least clearly don't think that way. Either way its not really the warranty wording that matters here, rather tha fact that Specialised don't hide behind theirs........

LOL

I'm not, I'm just giving my opinion, I think it's an outdated view. They are very high quality bikes these days. My next bike will probably be a Carbon Rush or I nearly got me credit card out for a Synapse t'other day