‘It’s not a bike for introverts,’ says Curve co-owner Ryan ‘Rhino’ Flinn. ‘You’re going to get a lot of attention riding this thing. “That’s not a normal bike, is it?” is something you’ll hear a lot of.’
The hugely oversized wheels of the Titanosaur ensure that it is anything but normal, but there is method in the madness behind the Australian brand’s behemoth.
‘We originally designed it as an outback tourer about six years ago,’ says Flinn. ‘The Australian Outback is known for its horrendously corrugated terrain, which regular wheels – even 29ers with three-inch tyres – struggle to contend with. Our thinking was simple: big wheels roll better.
‘Imagine approaching a gutter on a scooter with tiny little wheels,’ Flinn continues. ‘You wouldn’t stand a chance. The angle of attack is too small. The gutter towers above your wheels and you’re just going to plough right into it. But the Titanosaur’s 36-inch wheels tower above the gutter, rolling over it with ease. That’s a very basic crash course in the physics behind the design.’
Flinn and his Curve crew know a thing or two about unforgiving terrain. This is a bike brand built around adventure. In fact, when we spoke to him for this article, Flinn was in his native South Africa, neck deep in preparations for the Rhino Run expedition – a 750km guided tour of the Western Cape via rocky mountain passes, forests and coastal trails.
This never-not-riding approach means that Curve’s tough-as-nails metal bikes really do get put through the wringer. Co-founder Jesse Carlsson not only rode but won the gruelling 6,800km Trans Am Bike Race on Curve’s first ever road bike, the Belgie, in 2015 before making it available to the public for the first time.
‘We often go way beyond what other brands do in terms of testing, but also in creating a well-considered bike,’ says Flinn. ‘I remember being laughed at when we released one of the first gravel bikes back in 2016. Sure, we take these bikes around the world with us and we ride them hard, but we design, engineer and create bikes we want to ride, and hope to encourage more people off the couch and into the great outdoors.’
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Jurassic bike
Taking its name from the largest of the dinosaurs, the Titanosaur is one such machine. It’s a titanium drop-bar off-roader with some seriously big shoes – Curve’s 36-inch ‘Coop Hoop’ carbon rims. As touched upon, the initial idea was to make something that would roll smoothly over lumpen outback terrain, but the Titanosaur has since found a new calling as a gravel bike for lofty riders.
‘It’s best suited to riders six feet and up, but with sizes medium to 4XL available, the Titanosaur can accommodate riders anywhere between 5ft 7in and 7ft 3in,’ Flinn says. ‘Tall riders can have a tough time finding bikes with conventional wheels that will fit them properly and handle well, but the Titanosaur solves that.
Flinn credits this surprisingly easy handling to the carefully engineered geometry. The physics, he claims, are spot on, and with a theoretical physics PhD as his business partner, he’s most likely right. The head tube angle and fork offset give a trail figure that Flinn says allows the Titanosaur to handle like any other bike in the Curve range, even with those gargantuan wheels.
‘Weirdly, the Titanosaur’s geometry seems to be completely different to other 36-inch wheel bikes,’ says Flinn. ‘I’ve spent a lot of time riding it and the only thing I’d change is the fork – we need to go carbon to strip some weight and add some stiffness.’
Descent of man
The Titanosaur, as you can probably imagine, is not much of a climber. Nor was this its intended use. But what about going downhill? According to Flinn, descending is quite the experience. He claims the enormous wheels act as gyroscopes spinning away beneath you, making the bike incredibly stable at speed. Even lumps and bumps can’t knock it off its line.
‘It’s like you’ve unlocked some sort of secret stabilisation mode,’ he says.
But the Titanosaur does have one drawback. Currently, there is only one off-road tyre option on the market to fit wheels of this size. And unfortunately it’s not quite up to Curve standards.
‘I’d love to make some better 36-inch tyres for the Titanosaur, but there’s usually a large minimum order quantity coupled with huge setup costs. It’s a shame because the tyre we’re using at the moment weighs 1,460g. If we were to scale up our favourite 29-inch tyre it would come in just under 1,000g. That sort of reduction in rotating mass would make a huge difference to how the Titanosaur climbs. It would be amazing.’
At the time of writing, the Titanosaur hasn’t yet been unleashed upon the general public. Curve says the brand has had lots of enquiries from tall riders keen for a gravel bike that fits them, but developing new products is a time-consuming and laborious process – one that the Titanosaur is still only part way through.
‘We’ve settled on the geometry, drawn up a size chart, perfected our fork option and we’ve got a build kit that makes sense,’ he says. ‘Unfortunately, we’re still a way off having a product that we can sell.
‘How far exactly? At the moment I’m not quite sure, but we’re committed to the project and we hope to make some significant progress in 2025. We even have an extremely tall ex-pro cyclist wanting to help get it off the ground, potentially racing it at Unbound.’
This isn’t just a tall story – you can follow the story at curvecycling.com.
• This article originally appeared in issue 159 of Cyclist magazine. Click here to subscribe
