Wish Intense still made the Intense Socom? Well, a new leak from Jeff Steber shows that he is working on a replacement to the much-loved freeride bike.
The Intense Socom has always been a bit of a mash-up of Intense bikes. The last production Socom mixed the Uzzi and M3 to create a bike that would easily accept a dual crown fork or triple chainset and would be just as happy riding uphill as it would be jumping over a train. That was back in around 2009, and apart from a one-off Socom test mule spotted in 2016, the classic freeride/do it all bike has been missing from the Intense lineup.
Until now… well not quite, but the Socom does appear to be making a comeback and it’s thanks to Jeff Steber and his eager camera shutter finger that we already know about it.
We’ve reported in the past how Jeff Steber isn’t the best at keeping the latest Intense models under wraps. In just the past few months he leaked the Intense Tazer on Instagram, follow up photos showed the possibility of another e-Bike, and now we have images of a new Socom under construction thanks to “Mr. Intense”.
To be fair to Jeff, he does appear to be playing the #hype game and only tends to ‘leak’ images when a launch is only around the corner. So this could mean that the final carbon Intense Socom is already being tested, and more excitingly it could be on sale sooner rather than later.
The leaked images don’t show a complete Socom, but we do get a look at the various hydroformed alloy tubes of the test mule before being welded together.
“Socom Prototype” is quite clearly written on one of the suspension linkages, in case you’re wondering how we figured out what this bike is.
Looking at the various tubes and CNC machined parts it looks as though this new Intense Socom could feature a similar top tube mounted shock and main link just like the previous production bike, but very different from the last proto spied under Palmer (which incidentally was very similar to the current Santa Cruz suspension platform).
As this is an early leak we can’t be sure what specifications the new Intense Socom might have, but we’re expecting a 29er with around 170mm travel up front and 160-150mm of travel at the rear. We also noted that the Intense Tazer launched with a more aggressive geometry than previous Intense models so expect Jeff to add a little L.L.S to the new Socom too.
We’ll be keeping a close eye on Jeff and will let you know of any updates, in the meantime, did any of you have a Socom in the past? Are you excited about this updated model from Intense? Let us know in the comments section below.
