Review: Mission Bicycle Company Sutro

If you're a city person who uses a heavily customized steel road bike as your primary mode of transportation, you're a freak.

I know this because I am one of you. My emotional attachment to my bicycle is one of unhealthy intensity. The bike I ride every day is not just some inanimate object. It's a close personal friend, a life partner. I coddle it, care for it, tell it stories.

Though my bond with my bike is strong (I call her Goldie), I do occasionally get the wandering eye. I'm not above openly ogling all the gleaming, powder-coated specimens locked up outside the coffee shops, artisanal salt boutiques and bespoke scarf manufactories in my disturbingly hip neighborhood.

So I suppose Goldie would be jealous if she knew I just spent an entire week shacked up with this hot new thing, a young beauty named Sutro.

The Sutro is the latest city bike from San Francisco's Mission Bicycle Company. For the past few years, the small shop has built its business offering custom builds – the company adds whatever components you want to its stock design, a frameset called the Valencia. It's a track-style bike, so it's almost always sold with a single-speed or fixed-gear drivetrain.

Mission Bicycle wanted to offer a more versatile bike, something built to handle a wider array of gearing options.As popular as the Valencia frame has been, the folks at Mission Bicycle wanted to offer a more versatile bike, something built to handle a wider array of gearing options. So instead of taking a single-speed bike and squeezing a multi-gear hub into it, the company's designers crafted a new frame specifically to use internal-gear drivetrains.

And so the Sutro was born. The name comes from Mount Sutro, one of San Francisco's famous "seven hills," which sits in the middle of the city like a beacon. A fitting name to give a machine made for the steeper stuff.

Mission Bicycle launched a Kickstarter campaign to get the design into production, taking pre-orders at $1,234 each. The frameset alone is also offered for $350. The Kickstarter drive ends on Monday, Apr. 9, and it's already well past its goal. The first round of bikes are expected to ship some time in June.

Like the Valencia, the Sutro is crafted from 4130 chromoly steel. But the Sutro has a wider spacing between the rear dropouts – 132.5mm instead of the Valencia's 120mm. The extra width allows it to accommodate a number of internal-geared hubs like an 8-speed or 11-speed Shimano Alfine. It will even take a 14-speed Rohloff or one of the new Di2 internal-gear hubs if you want.

The Sutro's design uses internal cable routing, reducing the clutter of the additional cabling and keeping the lines handsome and tidy. One other change on the smaller size frames (50 and 53cm): the seat tube angle is slightly steeper than the Valencia, and the top tube has been lengthened by 1mm to eliminate toe overlap.

Think of a city bike from Mission Bicycle as a platform – you're given the raw starting point, and you spec it out however you want. The frame is built in Taiwan, then painted and assembled in San Francisco and shipped to you or held for pick-up.

The Sutro comes stock with an 8-speed Alfine, a grip shifter on a set of riser bars, a pair of hand-built wheels with Velocity deep-V rims, and any color of paint you'd like. Add-on options are extensive – everything from Chris King headsets to Thompson seat posts and Brooks saddles.

My tester, which I had for a week, was upgraded with a Sugino RD crankset and a brown leather Brooks saddle with matching leather bar tape on a set of bullhorns. For a shifter, the bike used a JTek bar-end unit made for these Shimano hubs. For brakes, I got a set of cross levers set up near the stem.

I rode it to and from work every day, and I took it up and over a few small hills during some hour-long weekend rides. It's a fun bike, responsive and solid. A bike with bullhorn bars always encourages you to stand up, tip forward and really throw down some power, and getting the Sutro up to top speed was an irresistible rush. Once I really got it cooking, the bike stayed steady and performed as well as a classic steel racing bike. The odd thing is, it's still very much a track-style bike, but one that's been slightly massaged into a multi-geared bicycle. Still, it was always comfortable – especially so in traffic, but also on the steeper hills I routinely avoid on my single-speed.

My only quibble with the test bike was the placement of the brakes. I'd have preferred a set of pursuit levers at the ends of the bullhorns. But, that would require a pair of clamp-on levers to leave room for the JTek shifter on the tip of the right bullhorn. Maybe the more comfortable arrangement would be a set of traditional drop bars with JTek's indexed shifter, which I really liked, placed on one of the ends. This is the beauty of a custom bike, though – you can have it set up however you want.

The price is steep. There are plenty of awesome city bikes you could buy for less than $1,300, maybe even for half the money. Also, the Sutro's base configuration relies heavily on cheaper Origin-8 components, and the price climbs once you start swapping in the fancy stuff.

But what you end up with is something hand-built for you alone, using parts and colors of your choosing. That's worth something extra. And it's a very attractive bike. Like, wolf-whistle sexy. I want to take it home and and cook it breakfast. Don't tell my Goldie.

WIRED Comfortable frame, handles well on the hills even though it has the soul of a track bike. 8-speed Alfine hub has enough gears for almost the whole city. Internal cable routing makes for a clean look. At 24 pounds, not a bad schlep. Five frame sizes: 50, 53, 56, 59 and 62cm. Fully custom build – if you're local, you even get a one-on-one design appointment.

TIRED Base price is high, and choosing better components makes it even higher. No eyelets for racks or fenders, so you're stuck with Race Blades and a backpack. Limited distribution – if you want to test ride one, pack your bags for SF.