Giant TCR - the Miata of road bikes?

I've had a 2013 Giant TCR for a month and am still getting used to how nimble and fast-accelerating it is. 

It seems that anything else you can get for that money is larger, slower-turning, and heavier. 

Is there any reason not to recommend a TCR to anyone who wants a road bike?

I have a Giant touring bike that was given to me and I use to get me around the hood when I know I am going to have a social beverage or two. Well named bike; at 5'8" I look silly riding the thing it is so tall. I call it my Giraffe. Supper easy to pedal and very well made. I suspect that "free" was one hell of a deal. Friend also gave my wife the wumans version and she wont ride it cause of the height thing.

I think I have a TCR. I've been moving away from stuff with very skinny tires because I'm just so tired (ha ha) of flats and the ride quality, so it's just sitting. I put my wife on a gravel bike because of the comfort question and also because the skinny tires on her old Klein made her nervous. 

Maybe I'll have to pull out the Giant and refresh my memory.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Road bikes have changed quite a bit in the last 5 years or so.  With the industry-wide switch to disc brakes, designers found the wonders of wide, tubeless tires and what they can do for ride comfort and overall performance.  Now days, even TDF race bikes can run 30c tires, vs. 25c or so on the rim-brake bikes of yesteryear...  For comparison, any current "gravel bike" worth considering can fit at least a 40c tire and a few can fit 50c or 2" mtn bike tires. 

The Giant TCR is definitely still considered a good value bike for most riders.  "Value" being a relative term as modern road bikes are generally pretty expensive. 

I would argue the CAAD is the Miata, raced one for a while and had good luck with it. This was a while back and they are up to revision 13 now. 

In reply to Ian F (Forum Supporter) :

The bike industry is always claiming there's just been a revolution :)

But yeah, I'm all about running some rubber. The bike I'm neglecting my TCR for is a high-end Bianchi MTB hardtail that I've swapped drop bars, a carbon fork and pavement-oriented 40C gravel tires onto. It's definitely going to be more relaxed than the Giant (which is pretty sporty IMO) but it's a fun ride without beating me up.

I bought the TCR years ago - I think it's an aluminum frame with a carbon fork. It's got a triple ring up front which I do kinda miss on the 1x10 MTB. I'll drag it out next week and give it a spin.

The TCR was a revolutionary bike, designed by the late Mike Burrows.   The idea of making frames in only S/M/L sizes and adjusting the fit with the seatpost and stem was totally new in road bikes.  The sloping top tube was so unheard of it was initially banned by the UCI. 

Years ago I built a bike up for a friend from a TCR Team frameset, which was the 1st gen pro-level frame used by the ONCE team.   Cool bike that he rode for years.    

Huh, it's a much more interesting bike than I ever realized.

Interesting. I had a friend who designed for Giant before heading off to Vittoria and Geax. I'm sure that he'll have a lot to say about it. (He's pretty paranoid - says that Shimano stole their first indexed shifting design from him). 

Giant's always seem to offer very good value for the money and are very solid bikes. As someone with very long legs the compact geometry that they pioneered doesn't really work for me.

I'll agree with wearymicrobe, the CAAD series from Cannondale has always made for a great budget road race bike, I still have my CAAD9 that I bought new as a frameset right when they were winding down production in the US. Even as a size 63 with some choice parts was down near the minimum weight limit and never held me back. Nowadays that bike stays on the hook most of the time and my Trek Boone CX bike gets ridden more, those larger tires, more relaxed positioning and the ability to go kind of anywhere on it (especially away from cars) makes it more preferable. 
 

In reply to Keith Tanner :

In the case of road bikes, there really has been a dramatic shift, although it's definitely stabilized in the last couple of years. Now there is a somewhat silly amount of options depending on the rider, which is really confusing since visually the bikes all look the same.  There are "race" bikes, "climbing" bikes, "aero" bikes, "endurance" bikes, "all-road" bikes, "gravel race" bikes, "gravel extreme" bikes, and so on...  It's actually easy to get decision paralysis when shopping for a new bike and you sort of span across multiple categories.  This is my problem at the moment.  And when I'm looking at dropping somewhere in the upper 4-figures (if not 5) for the bike, I don't want to get it wrong... 

Ian, that's why I like my TCR - it's built as a criterium/climber bike, but it's good enough at the rest that the only other bike I've got is a mountain bike. 

Pulled it out of the shed for a photo after I was done with the mountain bike. Today's wind was better suited to trail riding :)

I wish I could've found an aluminum TCR, but none were on Craigslist, so I had to settle for carbon.