Eurobike 2017: Sunn’s Zig-Zag Shamann

Remember the Shamann from Sunn Bicycles? We’ll excuse you if you don’t, as the Sunn’s offerings haven’t exactly been at the forefront of most British mountain biker’s minds in the past decade.

We actually reviewed a Sunn Shamann all the way back in 2010 (a time when quick release wheels reigned supreme and you didn’t have to stipulate the diameter of the wheels in the review), where it featured 100mm of suspension travel and a simple four-bar suspension package with a top-tube mounted shock. Although the Shamann has remained in the Sunn lineup since then, things have quietened off somewhat.

But after making quite the splash in 2014 when it launched a concept downhill bike at the Roc d’Azur event, Sunn has been accumulating some fresh momentum, and is set to bring the name back into the mainstream.

Arriving at Eurobike with a healthy range of 2018 bikes, Sunn also had the brand new Shamann full suspension XC race bike that caught our eye during a routine pass through the open-air booths.

The Shamann is a short-travel full suspension XC bike, with 100mm of travel front and rear and 29in diameter wheels (see – we had to specify right?). It’s got a full carbon fibre frame, which features dramatic shapes and bulges to give the overall bike a very distinctive shape.

The mainframe itself is constructed as a carbon monocoque, with Sunn utilising high-quality Toray T700/800 carbon sheets to fashion up all of the tubes and struts. Feature wise, the Shamann gets a tapered head tube, a BB92 bottom bracket shell and Boost 148x12mm thru-axle spacing. The frame is 1x only, and it has a neat integrated top-guide that hangs over the chain to keep it from coming off.

Out back is 100mm of suspension travel, delivered by a rocker-driven single pivot. The swingarm is made from one piece of carbon fibre, with slender seat stays that are engineered to flex through their bow-like cross section to mitigate the need for a rearward chainstay or seatstay pivot.

The RockShox Deluxe RL shock is compressed from both directions, so it floats independently of the mainframe. No word on kinematics and such, though rear travel sits at 100mm, and Sunn has resisted fitting on a remote lockout, which is nice.

While we weren’t able to confirm frame geometry or the finer details on the frame construction and suspension design, we can confirm that the model here is the entry-level Shamann S2, which retails for €2599. It’ll be available in Small, Medium and Large sizes, comes with a RockShox Judy Gold fork and a Deluxe RL rear shock, and features a Shimano 1×11 SLX drivetrain with 720mm wide flat bars and a 70mm long stem as standard. Tyres are 2.1in wide Hutchinson Python/Taipan combo.

www.sunn.fr/en/

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