It started in a medieval castle high above the city of Colmar, with Fabien Barel yelling at a conscript army of international mountain bike journalists that, "This is revolution, not evolution!" It's a familiar clarion call; were we really about to witness a revolution?
We'd been called to the Alsace, France by the German direct-sales brand Canyon to witness the unveiling of its new Strive CF - the bike beneath the bags, as seen at the first rounds of the EWS this year. If revolution was on its way, a mountain-top castle was probably a good place to start.
The revolution in this instance is Canyon's new auxiliary gas spring, named Shapeshifter, which allows for a bike with a distinctly split personality by sliding the top mount of the shock 15mm fore and aft, changing suspension travel, suspension kinematics and frame geometry. It works with any shock and is standard issue on the Strive CF, a 160mm travel trail bike that the Canyon Enduro team has been racing the last two seasons.
| I want a bike that rides like a downhill bike on the descents, and climbs like an XC bike. I definitely don't want the same bike in the downhills as the uphills! - Fabien Barel |
With the shock in the rearward position, the bike is primed for downhill performance, with 163mm of travel, a 65.5 degree head angle, and a low, stable bottom bracket. Press the handlebar mounted Shapeshifter remote and shift your body weight forwards and the shock slides 15mm forward along the top rocker link, reducing suspension travel to 139mm, steepening the seat and head angles by 1.5 degrees and raising the BB by 19mm. To go back into downhill mode, simply press the Shapeshifter lever again and give the bike a solid pump through your heels, and hey presto, low and slack is back. In total, the Shapeshifter adds 200g to the weight of the bike. While that sounds great, the additional maintenance we typically associate with adding extra complexity to a bike is rarely something riders welcome; it's something Vincent Thoma, the Canyon engineer who led the Strive CF project doesn't see as a problem with Shapeshifter, saying, "It's a lot like a (dropper) seatpost, but the travel is a lot less, and it's a lot better protected."
It's certainly well protected - even without the bags, the Shapeshifter isn't something that immediately catches your eye when you look at the Strive CF. What perhaps is more eye-catching with these bikes is the geometry: Canyon has listened to their pro riders and bike reviewers who all complained that the bikes were too short, and introduced versions of the Strive CF with "Race Geometry", which is identical to the standard geometry, except the front centres are longer. So a medium race (which we rode at the camp) is now slightly longer than a large with standard geometry. The bike will be available in five different packages, with the 8.0 Race, 9.0 Race and 9.0 Team available with race geometry in sizes S, M or L, while the standard 8.0 and 9.0 SL retain standard length front centres and are come in sizes S, M, L or XL.
| We are a pure sporting bikes company. Racing is very important to us. We want to share our passion - Michael Kaiser, Canyon |
Over two days of testing I rode the middle bike in the Strive CF range, the €4299 9.0 Race. A quick car park spin revealed the Shapeshifter to require a little more co-ordination than I'd expected after the presentation, and switching between the two modes didn't feel particularly natural. The pressure in the Shapeshifter runs between 12 and 15 bar, and by tweaking that pressure you can tailor the bias of the device to your riding style. Joe Barnes' mechanic told us Joe runs 14.5 bar on his shock, but struggles with it if it's 14.
Riding the Strive CF:At 1m77cm, I was issued a medium sized bike with race geometry. Spec'ed with a 40mm Renthal stem, the riding position felt good from the off. The rest of the spec did a good job of inspiring confidence too with Maxxis High Roller II front and Minion DHR rear tires, SRAM Guide brakes, Rockshox Pike RCT3 fork, Monarch Plus RC3 Debonair shock and a Reverb Stealth post. These are all parts I'd spec on my own bike and they performed great on the broad mix of terrain we rode in Alsace.
After a couple of hours riding, the Shapeshifter became more intuitive, the bodyweight shifts required to affect the change in attitude becoming more subtle. By day two, the Shapeshifter was almost second nature.
There's a tautness to the Strive CF that really marks it out as a race bike. The rear suspension is very progressive, even in the downhill mode, something Fabien requested to counteract the downside of running short chainstays (
and the Strive CF has very short chainstays), which is the bike feeling like it's collapsing underneath you at a certain point of the travel in some situations. With more progression, that sensation is avoided. That tautness really comes into its own at speed: at the end of day one we rode a trail that started as a fairly wide doubletrack, with long fast corners. The length and subsequent stability of the bike made 50kph feel like nothing, and sitting in, dropping your heels and holding a turn to the limits of the tires' traction felt awesome. As the trail tightened up into singletrack, that length never really felt like a negative, and the short stem, wide bar and good tire combo meant I felt surprisingly comfortable following the dust cloud down the mountain on an unknown trail.
Flicking the bike into XC mode, the rise in bottom bracket is the most noticeable thing. That's always been a problem with fork based geometry adjustments - the BB just gets lower and you clip your pedals more. With systems like Shapeshifter, that's much less of an issue, and sitting up and spinning up the climbs felt pretty good - well, as good as it can feel in 30+deg heat. Out the saddle in XC mode, the bike sprints like an XC race bike, and you can quite imagine utilising this system mid-stage in an enduro race to blast up a short climb of power through a flat section.
Pinkbike's Take: | While the idea of creating a bike with two distinct geometries and feels isn't perhaps as revolutionary as Fab would have us believe (Kona's Magic Link tried to do something similar, and the Cannondale Jekyll platform achieves a similar result by a different method), Shapeshifter is very well executed, and the fact that it can be used with any shock makes us suspect Canyon will be rolling it out to more platforms soon. That should prove to be a very good thing, especially if Canyon continues with their push towards longer, "race" geometry. - Andy Waterman |
The Canyon Strive CF is available today from
Canyon, but for the time being, sadly not in North America.
www.canyon.com/_en/mountainbikes/bike.html?b=3509#tab-reiter1
If you zoom in on the main photo, you can see the tires are 650B. So I guess yeah, Enduro = 27.5 now?
What the magic link does is altogether different. It is a five bar suspension linkage unlike anything else out there. Unlike a four bar (or six bar) linkage a five bar linkage is unable to provide a predictable wheel path i.e. the arc followed by the rear wheel can change from compression to compression. Kona tried to make people think that is a good thing. It did spend a lot of time trying to tame the anarchy introduced by the fifth link and ultimately it failed.
Did he like it?
But, just another bike an American can't get.
27.5 is not just faster in every situation. Its faster in a straight line over bumps as long as those bumps are un-pumpable. I hate all this 26" is no good for racing bs. Look at ratboy, he's on the form of his life imo, and just happens to be one of very few guys left running 26 for dh. 650 is definitely faster on super wide flow tracks, but they're shit. Ruining the sport I reckon. Anyway, rant over.....for now. xx
But. It's got proprietary technology and no local service. Any time something goes wrong you've got to deal with Germany. Having read a lot of threads about their customer service, it seems a bit hit and miss (at least there are some hits). For the moment, that's enough to put me off.
I guess its time someone starts selling 900mm handlebars...
Bionicon changes angles (head tube & seat tube up-to 5.5 degrees ), wheelbase, fork travel and rear suspension firmness (via shock actuation ratio) at the same time.
Available rear travel and bb height stay the same
Maybe you should investigate a bit further. Bionicons simple and clever system do not lower the BB height at all.
The rear travel stays the same to. But in climbing geometry mode, the linkage forms a stable platform to reducera bobing.
bionicon.com/mountainbikes
Scroll down and read about "Bionicon System" and to whats called "Hyper X", to learn more...
The coming Edison Evo looks like a sweet almountain enduro ride to me. Could have the potential to be the ultimate do it all bike.
As far as I know, no other bike have close to the same range of on-the-fly adjustment? And that in just one button on the bars!
Choice is good for consumers. It's a shame for the americans that (thanks to spesh), they can't buy one.
it's the same for me to buy a Bronson frame here in Europe..... it would be cheaper( by 100 euro) to fly to the usa and pick it up personally than to buy it here.......
Gotta say the switchable geometry sounds like it has a ton of potential... Too bad the article didn't really go into depth about how it actually "works", not technically, but how does it change the ride?
I like the idea here, don't get me wrong, and I love the bike, but with all the bar real estate needed to be so enduro I reckon we'll be running 850 bars before we know it!
(great name btw)
Ok it climbs well, it is stable but most important of all is it fun to ride in DH mode?
But there are Nicolai and Liteville that are best known in Europe, but they have a quite simple design?
Unfortunately I don't think we can get them, anyone know?
I go all ecited to find out this bike is at an insane price but their page says this bike is sold out and clearlly says "we will not have more strive cf during this season"
I still do not understand why they show us this bike to find out it is sold out.
Der Kommentar war ncht wirklich konstruktiv gedacht. Es ist mehr Sarkasmus über das, was die Marketingabteilungen uns erzählen. Erst muss alles leicht sein, dann muss alles verstellbar sein und das Gewicht ist wieder Nebensache.
Vielleicht sollte man sich einfach wieder aufs Fahren konzentrieren und nicht auf jeden Trend reagieren als ob er pures Gold wär.
(Entschuldigung für mögliche Fehler :p)
It makes me hesitate to buy one.
fotos.mtb-news.de/p/1641952
www.youtube.com/watch?v=BW92t264eBM
By the way nice looking bike!
enduro-mtb.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Bildschirmfoto-2014-06-11-um-20.44.00-780x383.png
Will probably last just as long
Just kidding
Bionicon is the first thing I thought of when I saw this. I'm with you alonalgr.
Bionicons system do not lower the BB at all even if the fork travel drops in climbing geometry mode. When also the angle of the rear linkage change, to act as a stable platform to reduce pedal bob.
Its all clearly illustrated at Bioniconcs tech page at bionicon.com/mountainbikes