As first seen on BikeRumor and BikePortland, the Retroshift is a new spin on an old shifter design. Born from the muddy races of the Pacific Northwest cyclocross scene, the concept is easy enough to grasp—it’s a downtube (or bar-end) shifter grafted onto a modern aero brake lever. It’s simple as compared to rather expensive brifters for thrashing around in the mud, more or less impervious to the elements, and allows you to bail into friction mode in case of a bent hanger or other indexing problems. BikeRumor really gets into the tech side of things, but the short story is that the lever is currently a modified Tektro model that gets sent to the machine shop for a fitting, but assuming sales go as expected will move towards a locally produced lever from the ground up. Pairs will be available for $140 each, and you’ll have to add your own shift levers which when fully assembled are lighter than most brifters.

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