Quick thrash on the Privateer 141 Öhlins edition

Our man in Sedona, Tim Wild, got to shred various gnars for a few hours aboard an Öhlins equipped Privateer 141. Here’s a quick braindump about the prog rocking Scando-Brit colab.

Price: £4,499

Privateer 141 Öhlins

British Bulldog

Are you bursting with pride that a small West Sussex company is making some of the most progessive bikes in the world?

Do you like a wheelbase longer than War and Peace?

Do you like smashing through the toughest trails like a giant crushing a village?

Do you think an umlaut makes things intangibly cooler in some Teutonic, ‘vorsprung durch technic’ kind of way?

Then this is the bike for you.

Gold? GOLD!

Privateer’s regular 141 bike is already punching above its weight. Its huge fork offset, long wheelbase, unashamedly burly build quality and no-nonsense looks have been attracting attention from riders all over the world, and it’s a testament to the company’s skills that there’s considerable interest at their stand in Sedona.

With the likes of Santa Cruz, Giant, Rocky Mountain and YT all vying for punters’ attention, the Hunt wheels/Privateer stand is busy with well-informed US riders.

Pride of place on that stand is this – a 141 build with 150mm Öhlins RXF36 m.2 upfront and the Öhlins TTX2M coil in the rear. A vision of aggression in black and gold.

It instantly reminds me of the packaging on the high-end protein powders you see pro weightlifters using, which may not be a coincidence. I don’t have long with the bike, just a couple of hours, so it seems like a better idea to just point it downhill as fast as possible rather than muscle it up the local hills.

So it’s off to the jump trail lines.

Simply smashing

There’s no doubt whatsoever that this is a bike for smashing down trails as hard and fast as possible – it practically rubs an angry hoof in the dirt as soon as I throw a leg over it. It doesn’t feel heavy, and climbs fine – in a ‘you’ll get there, don’t worry’, carthorse kind of way – but downhill, it sings.

The Öhlins coil is a lovely thing, delivering super-smooth travel with none of the mild snapback you get from an air shock, and I instantly clear a gap I struggled to make on a smaller bike the previous day.

Despite the fact that I’m in Sedona, one of the world’s great riding destinations, I have a powerful urge for the Reds at Bike Park Wales – I want to be charging into Roots Manoeuvre as fast as I dare, beating my own PB and being uplifted for another go.

Surprisingly reasonable

Given that the Öhlins rear shock and fork combined retail cost alone is over £2k, the overall RRP of £4,499 seems remarkable, considering you get a Magic Mary Super-Trail upfront and a Hans Dampf Super-Gravity in the rear, a decent One Up dropper, Hunt’s own excellent Enduro Wide wheelset and Shimano SLX on the drivetrain. This isn’t some mass-produced white label build either – this bike is assembled in the UK.

TLDR: A Powerful Argument

In a world where huge global brands all compete to produce near-identical bikes, this is a relatively unique, bikepark-destroying monster that will encourage you to go full Berserker at every opportunity, while also looking fairly slinky.