Curve’s Walmer handlebar is very, very wide
Curve’s new handlebar is so wide, it tried entering a wide handlebar competition but got told that professionals weren’t allowed. Curve’s new handlebar is so wide, that it makes your bike taller laying down than when it’s upright.
Ok, you get the point. As first teased at the Australian Handmade Bicycle Show, Curve’s new Walmer drop handlebars are wide. Really, really wide.
Curve wanted a bar for its go-anywhere and go-everywhere bikepacking adventures and just couldn’t find the right thing as an existing option. Effectively they wanted the stability, leverage*, control and generous room for bags/accessories only afforded by wide mountain bike handlebars, while also having the multiple hand and body angle positions that a road handlebar provides.
The result is an almost hilariously wide bar which measures 750 mm at the drops. It’s a bar so wide it’s named after a pedestrian bridge local to Curve that it barely fits through. Curve’s closest competitor in this space is the Crust Towel Rack handlebar, which is 700 mm wide.
The 6061 aluminium Walmer bars offer a 29-degree flared drop with a mountain-bike-inspired 7-degree backsweep to help keep the effective reach similar to a narrower bar (wider bars extend your reach). The bar itself offers a surprisingly stubby 60 mm reach and 110 mm drop, too.
Curve first designed the Walmer seeking a bar that was wider than anything else.
Curve claims that it liked the dimensions of its super-wide Walmer bar so much that it made narrower versions for gravel bikes, too. For this, the Walmer is available in 460, 500, 550 and 600 mm widths, offering total widths at the drops of 610, 650, 700 and 750 mm respectively.
Such wide bars make finding the right bartape a little tricky, and so each bar includes Curve’s own extra-long tape (made by Velo). The Walmer bars sell for AU$189 (approximately US$130).
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