€14,000 EDDY70 steel racing bike launched to mark Eddy Merckx’s 70th birthday

Eddy Merckx Cycles is celebrating the 70th birthday of its founder and namesake with the launch of the limited edition EDDY70 steel racing bike. Just 70 bikes will be produced and each will cost €14,000. And no, that isn’t a typo.

The EDDY70 has been designed and built to Eddy Merckx’s precise requirements, and the first bike built has been gifted to Eddy this week. The other 69 bikes will be delivered on 17 June, Eddy's birthday. The EDDY70 prefaces the launched of a new Heritage collection due in September this year. 

Eddy Merckx raced on a steel bike for the entirety of his career, racking up a staggering 525 race wins during his professional career, and it'll be interesting to see what more they have in the pipeline.

Said Eddy Merckx: "Everyone knows that I was always obsessively focused on the equipment that I rode on. That is still the case now. And as a result, I wanted only the best and most modern components and materials for this bike. The aim was absolutely to make a high performance, contemporary racing bike and not a replica of my old racing bike."

So rather than a nostalgic retro bike to trade on the company’s heritage, the EDDY70 is intended to be a high performance steel racing bike making the most of the latest advances in steel tubing. There has been a resurgence of performance steel bikes in recent years, the likes of the Genesis Volare and Condor Super Acciaio to name a couple of examples, that take the latest steel tubesets and create frames that offer a high level of performance and competitive weights.

The EDDY70 is constructed from Columbus XCr stainless steel tubing, and TIG welded in the Eddy Merckx Cycles workshop in Belgium and finished with a Columbus carbon fibre fork. Only the best parts can be fitted to such a frame, and so it’s a Campagnolo Super Record groupset and Bora Ultra 35 wheels, finished with the EDDY70 icon. The same icon is also applied to the Cinelli handlebars, seatpost and saddle.

“...Eddy Merckx Cycles is drawing on the past, but only in terms of the design and colour, as the new steel bikes cannot be compared with the race machines from Eddy’s glory years. These are neither retro bikes, nor something for fixie-lovers; they are ultramodern, state-of-the-art racing bikes, improved with the best Columbus steel alloys and designed for superior performance," says the company.

Each of the 70 bikes will be numbered and signed by Eddy himself, and you can even choose where on the frame he applies his signature. You can choose which number bike you want, but you’ll need to be quick because, even at the extremely high price, we expect them to sell quickly. To lay your hands on one of these limited edition, and ultimately very desirable bikes, you need to head to the special website, www.eddy70.com, to order one. The first bikes will be delivered on 17 June, Eddy’s birthday.

The rejuvenated Eddy Merckx Cycles bikes have gone down well with road.cc testers in 2014, both the SanRemo76 and EMX-1 getting very good reveiws. The latest models, since the launch of the EMX525 back in 2012, draw inspiration for their names from Eddy Merckx’s vast and all-conquering racing history. With the renewed interest in steel bikes, often as an alternative to carbon and aluminium, it appears a good time for the brand to move into steel, and we can't wait to see what else they have planned.