[southerndownhill.com] DH/MTB Forum

Quote from: Santa Cruz Aug 2007 Newsletter



Bikes! New Ones! Check ‘em out! Trade show season is hauling toward us like an out-of-control freight train, and we’re already bracing ourselves for the anticipated outbreak of sore feet, sore backs and hoarse voices. To assist the development of all those signature trade show symptoms, we’re going to be introducing three new bikes as well:
V-10 After revolutionizing the downhill race world by mating the seemingly incongruous concepts of bottomless long travel performance with extraordinary pedaling efficiency, the V-10 became the Gold Standard of the DH circuit. For 2008, this no-compromise race machine has undergone further transformation. Thanks to some very careful redesign of the aluminum frame sections and a carbon fiber upper link, the new frame weighs in almost two pounds lighter and offers lower standover than the old one. The suspension has been revised to sit higher in its travel for a livelier ride, resulting in a lighter, tighter package with 254mm of rear wheel travel and razor sharp handling designed to do one thing: cut the fastest, most direct line to the top step of the podium.

Chameleon Following a long run as one of our most beloved jacks-of-all trades, the Chameleon has recently undergone some nip and tuck work. The aluminum frame is still as workhorse solid as ever, with a heavily gusseted head tube region capable of handling the loads of 160mm forks, super-bomber tough seat and chain stays and a new hydroformed top tube. We’ve added a stealthy new ultra-light eccentric BB and vertical dropouts for easy wheel removal and disc brake use with either gears or set up as a single speed, and we’ve employed the sw*nk replaceable derailleur hanger from the Heckler. Set it up however you want – it’s a single speed! An XC hardtail! A jump bike! It slices! It dices! It gets rid of your gambling debts! It plays a mean rhythm section! Well, you get the picture...

Stigmata Santa Cruz, making a ‘cross bike? Is this some kind of joke? Hell no! We are based in Santa Cruz, California, after all, and that implies a winter’s worth of mucky run-ups at the Watsonville fairgrounds, sand pits at Fort Ord, and that sketchy off-camber bit at Soquel high school. ‘Cross is part of the landscape here, and we wanted bikes with our name on the tubes to throw over our shoulders between October and January. So we took Easton’s new EA6X tubing and came up with a super lean (1300grams for a 54cm frame, with powdercoat), no-compromise (we don’t need no steenkin’ rack or fender braze-ons), race ready ‘cross frame. It has a low BB and tight geometry, and tons of tire clearance. She carves turns hard enough to leave scorch marks, and we can hardly wait for winter.
So, those are the new offerings, in a nutshell. We are expecting to deliver the Chameleon by the end of September, the Stigmata in October, and the new V-10 by the end of November. They will all be in the new catalogs that we’ll be distributing after Eurobike. We are also expecting to have them built into our website Bike Builder by Interbike. For more detailed information regarding pricing and availability, please contact your Santa Cruz Bicycles dealer.