With curved tubes evoking a classic cruiser, modern touches like modular dropouts and a PF30 bottom bracket, and bold pink or orange metal-flake paint, the Van Dessel Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is a bike that defies easy classification. It would be faster to say what it is not, but the point of the WTF is a kind of elegant marriage of minimalism and maximalism that indulges some detailing of its charms. (Get a daily dose of gear goodness by !)

Maximalism: The stock build from Van Dessel Cycles, shown here, is as an all-road/adventure bike. It starts with a TIG-welded 4130 chromoly frame and fork. Modular dropout inserts offer quick-release and thru-axle (12x142 rear and 15x100 front) wheel compatibility. Most important: Whether you buy just the frameset ($699) or a complete bike with one of 20 available build kits, the WTF offers broad customization options, which Van Dessel founder Edwin Bull says provide almost endless creativity for WTF buyers. 

Van Dessel WTF Rear Dropout
Joe Lindsey
The Van Dessel’s versatility can be seen in one image: rack and fender eyelets; quick release or through-axle wheel compatibility; and a split seatstay for belt drives.

Here’s a short list of how you can build a WTF: flat or drop bar; 2x or 1x drivetrain; single-speed or internally geared hub via an oversize bottom bracket shell that accommodates an eccentric; chain or belt drive; with tires from 700x25mm slicks to 29x2.1 knobbies. Fenders, racks, or both. It’s a winter road bike, a commuter, loaded touring rig, gravel/adventure bike, monster crosser, even rigid 29er mountain bike. The WTF, like a 12-bar blues solo, offers seemingly endless riffs.

     RELATED: Why You Only Need One Bike

Minimalism: It is all of those things in one bicycle. About the only restrictions are that it’s disc-brake only, and won’t take a modern suspension fork (the geometry is not suspension corrected and the steerer tube is 1-1/8-inch rather than tapered).

All of that is what attracted me. I’ll admit a quixotic fascination with the idea of the One Bike, the quiver-killer that reduces your fleet to one impossibly versatile machine and a few wheelsets. The WTF is the kind of bike that comes closest to fitting that bill.

Of course it comes from a small company. Many of the most creative and genre-busting bikes we see today originate with smaller brands—the Van Dessels and Surlys and Rivendells—who can take a chance making something that the accountants at Big Bike will nix because unit sales don’t justify the investment. Van Dessel today is best known for no-nonsense race bikes, but the brand got its start with city bikes and an ahead-of-its-time all-road adventure bike called the Country Road Bob. The WTF, says Bull, is the descendant of the dear old CRB, which was beloved for its ruggedness and versatility.

Van Dessel WTF Alternate Build
Joe Lindsey
The WTF can be built any number of ways, like this smart-looking 1x11 commuter build with swept-back flat bars, fenders, and racks.

A ride on the WTF offers a similarly endless horizon of options. The build kit Van Dessel picked for our tester is a straight-ahead adventure bike, with a full Shimano Ultegra 11-speed drivetrain and 685 hydraulic disc brakes, with a wheelset upgrade to Mavic’s rugged Ksyrium Allroads, is $3,449—not chump change by any stretch, but neither is it ridiculous. Complete builds start at $2,100. 

     RELATED: The Best Adventure Bikes of 2016

Shod with 700x40mm WTB Nanoraptor tires, the WTF rolls somewhat slowly on pavement, as you’d expect. But it’s more spirited than I anticipated, and the gigantic tire volume helps the bike soak up almost any imperfection on a paved road and even limits the buzz from the tire knobs. But the bike really lives for unpaved exploration.

West of Boulder, some of the paved roads disappear gradually: first to dirt, then unimproved fire-escape routes and, finally, down to whispers of doubletrack through alpine meadows and glens. They’re quiet places, good for the soul. The WTF seems, in every respect but one, ideally made to take you there. The geometry is a kind of broadly written cyclocross-ish chart, with similar head-tube angles and trail, but leggy 45cm chainstays that push the total wheelbase out a good three centimeters more than Van Dessel’s cyclocross race-focused Aloominator. 

So handling tends to the more stable side; it feels slow to turn in on paved descents, but manageably so. On dirt, the slightly slower steering feels great at speed, helping the tires keep purchase on washboards and rocky sections. Stack height is actually slightly lower than many cyclocross geometries, but I always felt comfortable and well-balanced front to rear on the bike, particularly when settled in climbing in the saddle.

Van Dessel WTF Top Tubes
Joe Lindsey
The WTF’s eye-catching look includes twin top tubes. They add weight, but Van Dessel claims they offer a smoother ride. We mostly think they look cool.

Which raises my only complaint about the bike: It’s heavy. There’s no way to sugarcoat it. The steel construction, in particular the twin top tubes, meant that our 53cm tester checked in at a portly 25.2 pounds without pedals.

You could race cyclocross on the WTF, although I’d recommend setting your sights on something like the donut race. One thing was undeniably clear: I was only unsatisfied with the WTF when I was pushing the pace hard. When I rode it like a performance bike, I found myself either climbing noticeably slower at a given effort, or blowing myself up trying to keep the higher pace I’m accustomed to on lighter bikes. This is 100 percent a static bike-weight issue; the bike is plenty stiff under power for most riders, and the experience didn’t change much when I swapped to 28mm slick tires, which reduced rotating weight.

That’s not an indictment of the WTF; it is a note about expectations. When I ventured out on the WTF with an exploratory mindset, I had nothing but fun. I enjoyed the views, enjoyed the climbs, the descents, every aspect of the ride. And the WTF ably managed every piece of terrain I ventured into, including some techy singletrack. But if I went out in search of a good hour-of-power throttling, I fought the bike, and myself, on climbs.

Van Dessel WTF External Cable Routing
Joe Lindsey
The WTF uses entirely external cable routing. It doesn’t look as clean as internal, but it’s far easier to work on.

Bull freely admits that the WTF is not a performance-oriented machine, pointing to its descendance from the Country Road Bob. If you want WTF-like versatility in a lighter package, he says, the new aluminum A.D.D. is a better choice, for slightly more money.

So is the WTF a “One Bike?” Maybe not, in the sense that I do love a good headbanger session where I don’t feel I’m dragged down by bike weight. But the WTF is a “One Bike” in the sense that it can do almost anything. Bull says he’s had buyers craft everything from sweet 1x11 Alfine commuters to rigid 29er mountain setups for bikepacking adventures. 

     RELATED: Sprint Forever on the Van Dessel Motivus Maximus

Just as with fat bikes and then plus, big bikemakers are now edging into the adventure/gravel category. They compete admirably on price and spec, as you’d expect given the economy of scale they offer and the concessions they can wring from suppliers. But many of those are stock options; you get what you get. The WTF is something special yet: a non-custom bike you can make truly your own, for almost anything you want to do with it. Whether it's a "One Bike" comes down to the range of things you want it to do. But given the endless options, it’s sure to be one-of-a-kind.

Headshot of Joe Lindsey
Joe Lindsey

Joe Lindsey is a longtime freelance journalist who writes about sports and outdoors, health and fitness, and science and tech, especially where the three elements in that Venn diagram overlap.