Hayes Announces Limited Edition Purple Brakes

PRESS RELEASE: Hayes

Historically associated with royalty, the color purple represents power and high standing. The expensive and complex nature of the procurement of the dye ensured that only a select few privileged individuals were to be seen donning the illustrious color. The purple associated with Hayes since the brand’s inception, serves to underline the prestige, power and high standing of brakes that are designed, built and held to a higher standard. The Purple Hayes colorway provides a visual cue to the justly earned position of the brand’s brakes amongst mtb component aristocracy.


While the power, performance and reliability of the Hayes Dominion brakes are available to all, the PURPLE HAYES version of the iconic brakes is, as with dyed fabric reserved for historic royalty, available only to a select few. Official Hayes riders across all disciplines will compete with Purple Hayes, building up their bikes with a more visible badge of pride known as Dominion in the highly regarded purple. However, as brakes are produced for MTB royalty at the professional level, an additional quantity will be made available for a few lucky consumers who wish to not only ride the same quality as the pros, but desire to build their bike with a visual statement of their great taste in fantastic braking performance. While available in all markets, the quantities of the Purple Hayes brakes are limited to the extra quantity associated with the athlete production run and as such will be sold in a first come first serve basis while supplies last.

The limited-edition release of the Hayes Dominion A4 “Purple Hayes” Brake Kit may fit the royal metaphor yet it is truly a symbol of its own heritage more than anything else. The purple colorway is a testament to the early days of mountain biking that saw Hayes bring a technology to the world that was to forever change our sport. The early editions of Hayes disc brakes were both groundbreaking and disruptive. To celebrate such a fantastic ride, a quarter century of molding the definition of fantastic braking performance for mountain biking, Hayes is to produce a limited run of the highest performing brake to date, the Dominion A4, in a colorway that recalls perhaps the brand’s most iconic and visually striking model.


The Purple Hayes, launched in 2000, were an immediate success as much for their loud colorway as for their bombproof zinc construction and quickly gained cult status amongst those in the know. While the purple colorway wasn’t seen on the professional circuit, the same 2-piece zinc DH master cylinder bodies were on the top teams of the time (Specialized-Mountain Dew, Volvo-Cannondale, Trek-Volkswagen, Tomac Racing, Maxxis, Foes, Fisher, Be-One Racing, Haro, Mongoose and several others) only in the stock color, Champagne, with purple logos. Eventually this same brake garnered such attention that a version available to the public, in a purple anodization, a play off of the purple Hayes logo on the team version.

The Limited Edition 2023 Purple Hayes A4 Brake Kits are a fitting celebratory piece of not only the iconic past product but a fantastic way to commemorate what an impact Hayes has made over its 25-year history in the cycling world. Revolutionizing the Mountainbike industry with the introduction of some of the sports very first hydraulic braking systems in 1997 led the way to setting standards that shaped our sport from its infancy to current day. Hayes was instrumental in developing the standards around performance, rotor sizes, mounting hardware, mounting dimensions, open systems, fixed caliper, radial mount and slotted adjustments among others. Parallel to developing the standards, Hayes worked diligently with OEMS to integrate these standards and with suspension manufacturers to set testing standards.


Innovations followed, some setting standards, others at proprietary technology that would dictate what not only a hydraulic disc brake was but what an advanced one should look and operate like. Launching the original Hayes Mag was just the first step in a long tradition of continuous innovation that has never slowed down and still has a valid claim on producing the finest, most reliable and top performing brake on the market. Purple Hayes, blowing minds from 1997 straight through the current day… Get yours quickly as quantities are limited!