This article was first published in Rouleur Issue 143 and was produced in collaboration with Winspace
The status quo has been disrupted. For years, Western brands have held a hegemony in road cycling, demanding ever increasing prices for their latest performance-focused designs, while the manufacturing has been predominantly outsourced thousands of miles away to Asia.
Now, the factories of China, Taiwan and Vietnam are getting in on the action, taking the expertise in carbon composites honed over decades and cashing in with their own product lines, undercutting the established order with pocket-friendly prices.
Not all are made equal though, and scouring Panda Podium and AliExpress can sometimes feel like a lucky dip – will the frame, wheelset or component with an unfamiliar name be a worthwhile investment or an accident waiting to happen?
In this setting, Winspace stands alone. The Chinese brand has more than 18 years of experience in advanced carbon engineering, and its Lún wheelset range was an early pioneer of wheelsets featuring unbonded carbon fibre spokes. It has since built up an impressive portfolio of framesets, wheels and handlebars that even have Grand Tour and one-day Classics credentials, having been used by the Women’s Pro Tour team Mayenne Monbana My Pie since 2024.
Unlike the one-hit wonders that seem too good to be true before disappearing into the ether, its products have been proven on the biggest stage and aren’t a case of a factory slapping a name on an open mold design. “They’ve been a brand since day one,” says Mike Pryde, Winspace’s technical director, who joined from New Zealand’s Chapter 2 earlier this year. “It’s a legitimate manufacturer that is a brand in its own right. It’s invested a lot in its own design and R&D, rather than just copying from others.”
Its most recent release – the M6 – is the latest fruit of its labour. An aero-optimised road platform designed with the average cyclist in mind, it looks to offer tangible performance benefits for its riders; rather than the bold claims of superbikes that mere mortals are unable to realise.
“Winspace has always benchmarked its frames against some of the big manufacturers in terms of stiffness and head tube stiffness, but it’s not just about copying what those brands do, but also adding your little recipe to it,” says Pryde. “Often, the bikes that are designed for racing at the Pro Tour level are probably over-stiff, too low and too long in terms of the stack and reach for your average person. The M6 is designed to be much more practical.”
Its more generous geometry doesn’t sacrifice its wind-cheating prowess though, and it’s shown to be 8.9 watts faster at 48 km/h compared to its predecessor, the C5 Aero. Pryde explains that this advantage was achieved by extending the aero profiles’ chord length (the distance between the leading edge and trailing edge), particularly on the head tube and forks. The gains were discovered by Winspace’s in-house R&D team using CFD modelling before being validated at the Fuji Aero Performance Centre in Japan.
“They’ve deepened the fork significantly to be very close to what the UCI rules permits,” explains Pryde. “In straight line speed, it’s incredibly fast – it cuts through the wind really well. It might get affected by a little bit of side wind but if you’re not using super deep wheels, it’s not a big issue.”
Speed is one thing, but safety was also a major consideration for the M6. Although it had previously partnered with external factories, the frameset is the first to be made at Win-space’s own Xiamen-located space where quality is guaranteed by a rigorous testing protocol that sees every frame, fork and handlebar scanned by a medical-grade X-ray machine to ensure high standards.
The frameset itself is constructed from Toray M60 ultra-high modulus carbon – a blend favoured by the aerospace and defense industry for its stiffness and rigidity – and is hand laid by Winspace’s own carbon composites experts. On the scales, an unpainted size medium comes in at 900g, while the fork adds another 450g.
It’s completed with modern integration at its forefront – SRAM UDH hanger compatibility, fully integrated cable routing, industry-standard T47 threaded bottom bracket and 32mm tyre clearance – but it hasn’t forgotten its end user, either.
“The M6 is a viable alternative to something like the Cervélo Soloist,” says Pryde. “You’ve got the S5, which is what the pros are riding, and it’s a very extreme bike; the complexities of the bayonet fork and all the internal cabling mean it’s not exactly something you can just throw in a bike bag and go to Mallorca with for a ride. But then you’ve got the Soloist, which is a far more sensible bike in terms of its geometry and handling characteristics, and this is where the M6 comes in.”
At £1,450 for a frameset and complete models starting from £3,550 including delivery and import taxes, the M6 might just be the more sensible choice for your bank balance too.
