Santa Cruz has just leaked pictures of its new 29er carbon hardtail. It doesn’t have a name yet (that they’re telling anyone anyway) and the details are deliberately vague, but they’ll be doing a full launch at the end of March.
Basically it’s a carbon 29er hardtail, with tapered head tube and wishbone back end. It features a normal threaded BB insert rather than the recent (and confusing) move towards multiple different press-fit BBs. It features a picture of a coctail glass and the name won’t include the words ‘boy’ or ‘knife’
Shiny black and red (the 49er version), or matte black with silver/white (raider nation)
The Santa Cruz Mojito perhaps? Sundowner? Tequila Sunrise?
A familar profile if you've sat aboard the Drive8 - a very pleasing flare from skinny at the seat tube to super-fat at the headtube...
...which is flared (natch) for tapered forks.
Neat back end with non-bandwagon IS brake mounts. Looks like there's room for metal dropout inserts there too.
Again a non-bandwagon BB shell with threaded inserts. Neato chainsuck plate too.
And why are there two blurry bikes in that photo? Is there something else they're hiding from us? That's certainly not one of the two colours above...
With 23 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps is the longest-running mountain bike magazine editor in the world. He started in the bike trade in 1990 and became a full time mountain bike journalist at the start of 1994. Over the last 30 years as a bike writer and photographer, he has seen mountain bike culture flourish, strengthen and diversify and bike technology go from rigid steel frames to fully suspended carbon fibre (and sometimes back to rigid steel as well.)
the lecht rocks: go to wikipedia and read about what lies at the base of capitalism. One of fundamental actions needed to be taken by a company (might as well be the industry as general) in order to grow and develop is a constant search for “new fields to plow”. That apart from the fact of minimizing costs by exploiting work force and other crap that we are shuffled with under the name of “conspiracy theories”. So if someone looks for the answer for the question: Are 29ers an actual improvement the certain answer is YES – in industry income records. The question is whether they work on trail? and the answer most probably is: it depends…
“Knife-boy” that would be a great name for a bike!
Is there a cocktail with ‘tall’ in the title. My guess is that the bottom photo shows the tallboy and this new tall…
Martini?
Is it just me, or is Santa Cruz the new Specialized?
Just thinking that the decals look very “Spesh”
presume they’re made by giant as usual ?
Well, they must be due to bring out a CF superlight soon.
Is it me or is a hardtail carbon 29er a bike too far?
My money’s on that cocktail being a highball.
Like tallboy it’s a bomb and an allusion to tallness.
My understanding is that the Alu bikes are made by Giant, but the Carbon bikes are made by a company who doesn’t make MTBs for anyone else.
Oh and blackchrome – it’s just you.
😉
“matte black with silver/white (raider nation)”
surely thats Seahawk nation rather than raiders, who are just “the silver and black” don’t these yanks know there own sports?
i still can’t help but feel the 29’r movement is a bit of industrial propaganda…..
the lecht rocks: go to wikipedia and read about what lies at the base of capitalism. One of fundamental actions needed to be taken by a company (might as well be the industry as general) in order to grow and develop is a constant search for “new fields to plow”. That apart from the fact of minimizing costs by exploiting work force and other crap that we are shuffled with under the name of “conspiracy theories”. So if someone looks for the answer for the question: Are 29ers an actual improvement the certain answer is YES – in industry income records. The question is whether they work on trail? and the answer most probably is: it depends…
If you want a fast XC hardtail, get a 29er.
If you don’t want an XC bike or a hardtail, move along..
Photo of the full Santa Cruz bike here:
http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/new-santa-cruz-carbon-29er