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Why do Orbea and Orro both have bikes called Terra?

Someone on road.cc's forum asked, we didn't know, so we went and put it to Orro and Orbea to solve this riddle once and for all.....

The meaning of life, Stonehenge, the continued popularity of Mrs Brown's Boys... some of the world's great mysteries, I'm sure you'll agree; however a new conundrum has emerged on road.cc's forum recently, and it's one we were initially completely gazumped by too: why on earth do both Orro and Orbea have bikes called Terra?   

Both fall into the gravel/adventure category, and you wouldn't have thought 'Terra' is an immediately obvious name for a bike... so what's going on? Is it simply all a Terra-ble coincidence? We asked Orbea and Orro for answers to put this one to bed once and for all: 

Jokin Díez, Orbea's Press Manager, told us: 

"In the past we had an specific cyclocross bike that was called Terra. Then, when we designed our all road bike, we decided naming it as Terra. It's a pure coincidence."

Adam Glew, Ecommerce & Marketing Manager for Orro's parent company i-Ride, said:

"The Terra is our name for a family of bikes rather than a particular bike. We have the Terra Gravel and Terra Carbon. We got the name as we were using elements to name all the families of our bikes, Terra meaning earth, Aira for wind, Yara for water etc, so it’s a total coincidence really. We certainly didn’t know anything about the Orbea when looking at names."

So there you have it, nothing to see here and we can all sleep soundly tonight! As it happens, both Terras have been received positively on road.cc in the past year - check out Dave's unboxing of the Orbea Terra here and Mat's review of the Orro Terra C 105 Hydro here

It's not the first name clash we've seen in cycling, and it hasn't always been resolved in a cordial fashion. Back in 2013 Specialized were widely criticised over their decision to threaten legal action against a Canadian war veteran who named his bike shop Café Roubaix, with the US giants claiming that they had to in order to protect the Roubaix trademark for their popular endurance bike; however Specialized had to eat humble pie because they themselves licenced the name from Fuji, who in turn said the bike shop could keep its name. How many cycling name clashes can you think of? 

Arriving at road.cc in 2017 via 220 Triathlon Magazine, Jack dipped his toe in most jobs on the site and over at eBikeTips before being named the new editor of road.cc in 2020, much to his surprise. His cycling life began during his students days, when he cobbled together a few hundred quid off the back of a hard winter selling hats (long story) and bought his first road bike - a Trek 1.1 that was quickly relegated to winter steed, before it was sadly pinched a few years later. Creatively replacing it with a Trek 1.2, Jack mostly rides this bike around local cycle paths nowadays, but when he wants to get the racer out and be competitive his preferred events are time trials, sportives, triathlons and pogo sticking - the latter being another long story.  

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11 comments

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therevokid | 5 years ago
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my first proper race frame was an Argos ... lovely bit of 531  1 

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I am a human | 5 years ago
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I've seen someone riding a really nice looking steel framed bike made by Argos!

http://argoscycles.com/

 

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pockstone | 5 years ago
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Carrera ?

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don simon fbpe replied to pockstone | 5 years ago
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pockstone wrote:

Carrera ?

I thought this was obvious, but I suppose it depends on whether you've studied Spanish, or not. It comes from the Spanish for career and I think it alludes to being a starter range of bikes that get you onto the first step of your professional cycling career.

Or race.

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pockstone replied to don simon fbpe | 5 years ago
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don simon wrote:

pockstone wrote:

Carrera ?

I thought this was obvious, but I suppose it depends on whether you've studied Spanish, or not. It comes from the Spanish for career and I think it alludes to being a starter range of bikes that get you onto the first step of your professional cycling career.

Or race.

Indeed, God help the Grand Tour racer who isn't paying attention when buying his bike!

'I had that Claudio Chiappucci in my local Halfords the other day, wanting to price match...'

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yupiteru | 5 years ago
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I thought it was obvious, but I suppose it depends on whether you did Latin in school or not. 

Terra is derived from the Latin word for Earth or Land. The planet Earth was called Terra Mater, which came from the Latin goddess of the Earth.

Just a common name for a Raleigh Grifter type bike.

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SK | 5 years ago
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I may be mistaken but once there was a clash between Wilier and Trek. They waged a war over the "Foil" name.  Trek had its Foil model and Wilier a Twin Foil TT model (later renamed to Twin Blade and now discontinued).

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Vejnemojnen | 5 years ago
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S... Specialized

 

http://road.cc/content/news/115804-neil-pryde-bikes-renames-its-alize-bi...

 

recall this? Neil Pryde had to drop the name "Alizé", due to legal issues.

 

Those guys at spesh are a bit overreacting..

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don simon fbpe | 5 years ago
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Odd that the Basques could have used lurrak or even tierra instead of the Latin terra, OK I do understand not using tierra.

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I am a human | 5 years ago
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Fuji have a model called the Roubaix - it's weird that Specialized haven't kicked off at them, unless they've already settled out of court or something.

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Jack Sexty replied to I am a human | 5 years ago
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I am a human wrote:

Fuji have a model called the Roubaix - it's weird that Specialized haven't kicked off at them, unless they've already settled out of court or something.

Apologies the story was missing the last few lines, see this from the archives... http://road.cc/content/news/100570-caf%C3%A9-roubaix-keep-name-after-spe...

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