Wilier Filante SL

Fast riding and fast handling, but it deserves better wheels

- Words James Spender Photography Joe Branston

They say it's the height of vanity to go reading through your old bike reviews, but I couldn't help but go searching for the last time I rode a Wilier, and it was a whole nine years ago. And what a difference nine years makes. Governments have fallen, borders have been redrawn, and as a species our brightest and best spent time putting Katy Perry in Space. And then there's the bikes. How does the Wilier Cento10 Air I tested in 2016 compare to the Cento family's successor, the Filante? Well, fairly favourably.

That bike had one-piece bars and partially hidden cables because, yes, that bike had rim brakes. It cost £4,999 in Ultegra spec, weighed 7.51kg and tyre width was a progressive 28mm. But most favourably of all, it was aero-fied in a way you'd recognise today - dropped seatstays with winglike shoulders, deep head tube with hourglass profile, truncated main tubes and wide-stance fork blades and seatstays. So what can we learn from this, class?

First, that the venerable Italian brand was very much onto something, because the Cento10 Air featured a design that's ubiquitous today. Second, that there are only so many ways to skin the aerodynamic cat. I have no doubt that the Filante would prove a better bike than the Cento10 Air if a back-to-back test was possible, but I'd wager the gulf wouldn't be as big as nine years would have you believe.

Bikes today - I'll stick my neck out and say beyond £3,500 - are all really very good indeed, and the reason is everyone's been practising so hard at making them without having to contend with the kinds of technological leaps that present as many challenges as they do advancements.