Zirbelaci reinvents the Spinaci clip-on aero handlebar

Aero product design has come a long way in the last few years, but back in the 1990s Cinelli developed the now iconic Spinaci clip-on aero extensions, designed to provide the aero position of a time trial bike for a road bike. They had their fans, but not the UCI, as they were swiftly banned from competition for safety reasons. You can learn a bit more about the Spinaci bars here.

And now they’re back. Sort of. These new Zirbelaci clip-on aero handlebars from Swiss company Zirbel Bike are designed to be an enhanced Spinaci, but essentially they follow the same design as the originals. The key feature are the two curved extensions that clip on to the centre section of the handlebar and provide a position where you can rest your forearms on the handlebars and grip hold of the extensions.

According to the Swiss company that has developed them, the motive behind their development was from seeing lots of people using the position in the photo below, with arms draped over the centre of the handlebars as you often see professional racers doing. They also say they offer the advantage of providing enough space to hold onto the top of the handlebars compared to other aero extension bars on the market at the moment.

Zirbel Bike's Stefan Koller tells road.cc that there are good reasons to use this style of handlebar extension. "I like the Spinaci style extensions, there are good reasons to use them, but the Spinaci leads always to a very controversial discussion," he says. He admits he's not sure how much market there is for the handlebars, so he has produced a short run of the handlebars. They cost £170 with  one twist grip shifter or £230 with two twist shifters. 

The Zirbelaci bars are made from aluminium and compatible with 31.8mm handlebars, and they’re also compatible with Shimano’s Di2 electronic groupset, with two twist grip shifters to operate the gears, which can be used instead of Shimano’s own climbing shifting.

You’re certainly not going to be seeing these in the pro peloton, but where we think they might actually have a use in this day and age is for adventure and gravel bikes. You only need to look at some of the bikes of long distance cyclists like Mike Hall to see that stubby clip-on aero extensions are popular, for providing an alternative position and one that is aero, useful when riding long miles solo. 

What do you think? Is there a place for these handlebar extensions on your bike?

More at www.zirbel.ch/en/