Yesterday, Zwift introduced a new concept in the Drop Shop – four fresh colorways of a frame that is already in game, the slippery Canyon Aeroad 2024. These four new bikes are painted in distinct designs from the MyCanyon collection.
The MyCanyon custom program was announced earlier this year, offering customers the opportunity to create a bike using a personalized mix of components paired with a unique, high-end colorway.
MyCanyon features nine different colorways, but this week’s Zwift release includes a select four:
- MyCanyon Fabrio – Gold Dust: “A stunning golden yellow finish couples with striking mirrored decals. It’s a bike that radiates energy, and is as special as gold dust itself.” Read more >
- MyCanyon Mano – Carina Red: “Home to many massive stars, including several that are 100 times bigger than the sun, Carina glows bright and bold. Painted using a hand-stamping process, this frame has a deep and fiery red color that looks three-dimensional under the surface.” Read more >
- MyCanyon Opus – Felipe Pantone: “Inspired by the interplay of speed and technology, Felipe’s design represents organized chaos with some unexpected twists and turns as the bike moves. It’s modern speed, just like the Aeroad CFR.” Read more >
- MyCanyon Opus – Elena Salmistraro: “Imagining a bike in motion, speeding towards the sun, light dancing on its surfaces, Elena used a kaleidoscopic color concept in her design, making a perfect combination of modernity and fun that is ideal for attracting attention.” Read more >
Opinion: An Odd Departure
Zwifters have asked for more bike colorways for years, particularly when it comes to popular race bikes. But Zwift has always been oddly hesitant to release more paintjobs.
The S-Works Venge, the most popular non-Tron race bike on Zwift for years? Available only in a dull gray to this day. The Pinarello Dogma F 2024? We’ll create a fun Zwifty colorway, but if you weren’t there to do all the races in September 2024, you missed your chance! The S-Works Tarmac SL8, the new favorite race bike? You can have it in any color you’d like. As long as it’s white.
It seemed logical to predict Zwift eventually releasing fresh colorways for frames and wheels which we could purchase using Drops.
But this is not that.
Instead, if you buy one of the new MyCanyon bikes, it adds an entirely new bike frame in your garage:
Sure, this is how it would work in the real world. But why does it need to work that way in Zwift?
Four big issues I foresee with Zwift using this method to release new colorways:
- UI confusion (it’s not how the system has worked up until now): Many Zwifters already have multiple colorways unlocked for particular frames in their garage. You select the frame, then select which colorway you’d like. In fact, confusingly, the Canyon Aeroad 2024 has three different in-game colorways that work this way, meaning this week’s change adds four new colorways that work completely differently.
- Upgrader anger: If riders love their Canyon Aeroad 2024, then they’ve already worked to upgrade it. Now, if they buy a new colorway, that new bike won’t upgraded at all.
- Crowded garages: The request for Zwift to let us clean out our garages – even if it just means deleting items entirely without getting any Drops back – has been echoed so many times that it’s basically a community meme. This setup just makes our garages more crowded, when Zwift could have utilized the existing functionality of consolidating multiple colorways under one frame.
- No model names: This is a minor issue, perhaps. But there’s no indication in the Drop Shop of what model of Canyon bike these four new frames actually are, apart from the fact that they look like the Aeroad 2024. But are they actually the same? Do they perform identically? (Zwift tells me yes, but that’s not clear in the UI.)
Let me be clear: I’d be happy if The Drop encouraged me to drop major Drops on a sweet colorway. I’ve got 83 million+ Drops to burn, after all! So please, Zwift, go ahead and create super-exclusive and incredible-looking colorways. Give some of them crazy high prices, in fact. You could even do limited-edition releases. Make it feel special to be one of only a few owners.
But releasing them as standalone bikes just seems all wrong. So I hope Zwift decides to modify the Drop Shop, allowing us to purchase colorways for frames we already own without further crowding our garages.
What’s Next?
Zwift’s This Season on Zwift announcement made it sound like additional colorways would be coming after the initial Canyon release (“Stay tuned for more Drops coming to the Drop Shop this season!”)
I haven’t heard of what’s coming, or when. And frankly, I hope they fix the issue above first. But we’ll just have to wait and see what happens next.
Your Thoughts
What do you think of the look of these new Aeroads? Will you be buying one? What do you think of the whole concept of buying new colorways of frames to add to your garage? Share your thoughts below!
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