Bike Naming: A Step Too Gnar?

What’s in a name? Parents of new born babies spend many days flicking through books and carefully choosing a name that they think will suit their child. Something that conveys beauty, happiness, success, gravitas, their hopes for their child’s life ahead of them.

Imagine then the pressure of choosing a name for a new bicycle company and its new range of bikes. You want a name that conveys what your bikes are for: adventure, freedom, fun, play, speed. Something that will capture the imagination among the established big name brands. Something like ‘Sick Bicycle Co’ perhaps?

‘Introducing Sick Bicycle Co. Handmade British designed and built bike frames created with forward thinking Slaximum geometry for extreme situations.’

Slaximum geometry? Hell yeah. Get that trademark registration in the post.

And where can we find this Slaximum geometry? Aboard the Gnarcissist.

The Gnarcissist. Now we’ve heard it, it’s so obvious we can’t believe there hasn’t been one before.

What is it? Well, bonkers as the name might sound, it comes with the pedigree of having been designed and fabricated with Brian Jackson of Downland Cycles. It’s a Reynolds 853 steel hardtail with a ‘hyper-long wheelbase’ (longer than the Mondracker Summum), ‘super slack’ head angle (of course), and convertible dropouts to allow 1×12, Rohloff and Singlespeed set ups. It’s also 27.5+ compatible.

The press release says it’s been designed with the ‘express purpose to win enduro races and slay bikepark laps’.

It’s all so rad we might need a lie down in a darkened room.

One slight hiccup that might affect their sales in the Chinese market is that there looks to have been an element of lost in translation…This headbadge…

That Chinese character? It apparently translates as disease, or illness rather than ‘sick’. But since we suspect all this gnar gnew gnaming is self aware and heavily dosed in irony and other British humour traits unfathomable to the rest of the world, maybe not.

Now before you get all over excited and head on over to register interest for the soon to be launched Kickstarter one of the first ten bikes off the handmade production line, there’s another bike on the way. No pictures other than this shock mount as yet, however, it’s a 180mm travel (front and rear) 29er called….[drumroll]…The Gnarpoon.

More views of the shock mount are also here:

View this post on Instagram

@bicyclemanufacturing with the machining skills to make it happen. We're on build duty @downlandcycles tomorrow.

A post shared by Sick! Bicycle Co. (@sickbicycles) on May 4, 2017 at 9:20am PDT

What else could these makers of sick radness produce? A gravel bike called the Gnarmac? A singlepeed beltdrive Gnarmageddon?

The Kickstarter for the Gnarcissist is due to start on 17th May, with all frames being hand built in the UK.

Hannah Dobson

Managing Editor

I came to Singletrack having decided there must be more to life than meetings. I like all bikes, but especially unusual ones. More than bikes, I like what bikes do. I think that they link people and places; that cycling creates a connection between us and our environment; bikes create communities; deliver freedom; bring joy; and improve fitness. They're environmentally friendly and create friendly environments. I try to write about all these things in the hope that others might discover the joy of bikes too.

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