LOOK 695: The Future, Handmade

Few brands have been as far ahead of their time as LOOK. In 1984, the French company invented the clipless pedal. Bernard Hinault brought it into the peloton, and today every rider uses one. Two years later, Greg LeMond also won the Tour de France on the KG 86. It was one of the first carbon frames to conquer the Grande Boucle. While others were catching up, Nevers was already writing the next chapter. The LOOK 695 is the clearest proof of that.

When the 695 arrived, integration was still mostly a catalogue buzzword. LOOK, however, had already made it real. For example, the ZED 2 crankset is a carbon monobloc that joins crank arms and spindle in one piece. The C-Stem was just as clever, since riders can adjust its angle without swapping parts. Finally, LOOK designed the frame, HSC 7 fork and seatpost as one complete system. Many competitors only adopted similar solutions years later. What’s more, the frame is fabriqué à la main, as the sticker on the seat tube proudly reminds us.

For the build, we stayed true to the spirit of the era. The groupset is a mechanical Campagnolo Record 11-speed. Meanwhile, the wheels are stunning Lightweight Ventoux with tan-wall Vittoria Corsa tubulars. A PRO Vibe handlebar and a Fizik Antares 00 saddle complete the picture.

In the end, the scales confirm it all: 6.33 kg, well below the UCI limit. This bike therefore doesn’t need to be modern, because it already was the day it was born.