Specialized revives the spirit of the 80’s with a Rock Combo inspired Diverge for Unbound Gravel. Retro Specialized Rock Combo honored with a custom painted Unbound Gravel Diverge.
While the geometry is surprisingly relevant even by today’s standards, frame materials and componentry has come a long way in the last 25 years. Specialized specced a Suntour groupset with bar-end shifters. The triple chainrings came with 28/38/48 chainrings and the seven-speed cassette had a spread of 13-30. The brakes were Dia Compe 984D cantilever brakes paired with SunTour GPXBRS aero levers.
The Specialized Diverge despite only having a single front chainring, SRAM’s Red Eagle groupset with a 42T chainring and 10-50 cassette manages to give a wider spread of gears than Rock Combo. Other perks include disk brakes, the clutched derailleur that makes dropped chains a rarity and the wireless electronic shifting would have seemed like something out of science fiction back in the day.
Image credits: Specialized
Luckily for Alison Tetrick, Ian Boswell, and Laurens ten Dam who will be racing the Specialized Diverge at this weekend’s Unbound Gravel event, there are significant differences between the two bikes.
Arguably the best bit of the Rock Combo has been remembered, the strong 80’s aesthetic lives on through these custom painted Diverge’s which commemorate the Rock Combo at this year’s Unbound Gravel event. Specialized has done an excellent job of capturing the original design and transposing it onto the new bike to bring the retro vibe and a reminder of gravel’s roots to the dirt roads of Kansas.
