After a lengthy wait, you can now order a bike or frame from Atherton Bikes. Two models are available: a 150mm enduro bike and 200mm downhill bike.
Atherton Bikes first announced themselves over three years ago. Since then they’ve sold a hundred units to customers around the world. And finally this week sees them launch properly as a publicly available product via athertonbikes.com.
The launch is of a modest range of bikes (a 150mm enduro bike and 200m downhill) but the USP here is the range of sizes and customisation. This is due to their additive manufacturing technology, that is 3D-printing but 3D-printing with titanium.
The enduro bike will be offered in a total of 22 sizing configurations. The downhill bike will have 12. The customer goes through an online custom fit calculator which then spits out a recommended configuration. There is also the option to go totally bespoke if you want to.
The Enduro bike has seen some tweaks. The new version has port to port cable routing, down tube protection, a steeper seat angle and a longer seat-post insertion.
Although they are launching with just two types of mountain bike, Atherton Bikes also state that there are further product releases scheduled for spring.
The one-by-one nature of this additive manufacturing process removes typical three-year product cycle that comes with regular bike frames, especially carbon bikes that are made from very expensive molds.
Atherton Bikes explain, “this means that learnings from the racetrack or the company’s continuous testing at Dyfi Bike Park can be immediately incorporated into production bikes.” Everything is impressively in-house and centralised. The bikes themselves are manufactured in Machynlleth, Wales.
We look forward to trying one for ourselves in the near future. It’ll be an interesting comparison to the Robot R160 enduro bike of 2017, which was sort of the instigator of all this.
Here’s what the Atherton crew have to say:
Gee Atherton: “It’s so awesome to be taking the next big step for our start-up company.
It hasn’t been an easy time to set up a new bike company with shortages of components across the entire industry; we will always be grateful to those early adaptors who believed in us right from the start and ordered their bikes unseen and un-reviewed. It’s been a whirlwind three years that has seen some big milestones, including our first three World Cup wins, and the wildly successful crowd-funding raise that has allowed us to recruit some awesome young design and engineering talent, move our manufacturing in house and quadruple our production capacity
Atherton Bikes CEO Dan Brown” “Unlike the majority of high-end brands we don’t rely on carbon moulds or Far East production. Every one of our bikes is individually tailored in CAD to produce titanium lugs which are bonded to carbon fibre tubes with aerospace grade adhesive. Not only are our bikes very strong but we can react quickly, with vast potential for variations in size, geometry and the incorporation of new learnings in a continuous process of improvement.”
Dan Atherton: “It had always been our dream to set up a bike company with the Atherton name on it. We started using Formula 1 technology and aerospace engineering to make mountain bikes in Wales which was exciting for us and our desire to do things differently. “
Rachel Atherton: “Every bike is made to order and built to last so there is no waste. We all love it when we see our bikes out on the trails, we’re definitely still in start-up mode but I hope this next phase of our company’s development will give many more people the chance to try our bikes.”
The topic ‘Atherton Bikes on sale for £3999 frame or £6700 full build’ is closed to new replies.