Sea Otter 2012: Specialized’s Concepts

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Those crazy guys at Specialized are always playing around with new concepts. Headed up by Creative Director Robert Egger, it seems to always be playtime in the studio. All this playing around however has led to some great designs from the big S.
How’s this for a shuttle bike? Half Demo-8 and half scooter… Mr Egger has built this up as a shuttle bike for his ranch. You can tow pals back up to the top of the downhill course (and then enjoy the trip back down yourself…)

Egger literally chopped up a scooter (we think it was a Honda C90, but the moto experts will doubtless tell us what it is) and grafted it onto the back end of a Specialized Demo8. We don’t fancy pedaling that much.

 

Custom, well everything...
Fox 40s looks very at home on the front.

Moving on to road bikes. This is Robert Egger with his ‘lunchtime ride’ bike. Specialized’s lunchtime rides are legendarily fast and Egger reckons he needs this to keep up with the youngsters and semi-pros (and folk like Ned Overend who just turn up) who put the hammer down every lunchtime. It’s basically a time trial bike with drop bars. Every second counts (not that Robert seems to have problems going fast.)

If you've got it, flaunt it.
This was a natty magnetic aero cover over the front brake.
And this appears to be a direct mount time trial brake that we're probably not meant to see.
Jumbo stem made even longer by the integrated computer.
Spot the custom handlebar finishing tape.
Everyone over a certain age will remember these Spesh colours.

To show that it has an eye on the other future, there was a very neat electric bike on show. With a battery pack built into the downtube, this seems a very neat way of hiding a bit of extra go power into your daily ride.

 

Just the bike you need for a burn off from the lights. Come to think of it, we'll borrow one the next time we do a Specialized lunch ride...
We definitely like the red and black scheme too.

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Chipps Chippendale

Singletrackworld's Editor At Large

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.)

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Comments (1)

    The return of centre pull brakes? The must have on your “racer” in the 1970’s. My Raleigh Shadow had them so was a top dog bike!

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