She’s a beaut, Clark!
Is it lighter and more aero than the last one?
Lighter = Yes
Aero = No
Longer, Lower, Slacker? (The more relevant marketing schtick for MTB)
Yes, Yes, and Yes.
Honestly, I think they fixed the few complaints I had on my 2015 Stumpy. This bike looks to be a great all-around trail bike, and I welcome it.
Must be those 780mm bars 
I’m not a MTBer but the ad/promo video that they put on YouTube was genius
I am guessing you mean the one for the new EVO model that was released last week? It is a great piece with real concept that is super well done.
But that is about a different bike (the more AGRO/Enduro-ish version) compared to this TRAIL version. The one for the most recent release is a pure trail shred vid (but that monster manual at speed is MASSIVE and worth a rewatch when you realize how tough that is at that kind of speed).
Wow! Both of these videos are great!
I love the slight hilarity of the first one combined with excellent cinematics. Top notch haha. Also the Cody Kelley video is just gorgeous. I highly recommend watching both of these on a big TV with surround sound. Bliss
The big news here is Specialized moving away from the Horst link…that is monumental sea change.
That patent has been a nice revenue driver for them over the years as they (often wrongly) sued any company that got within shouting distance of their patent. They’d offer some royalty fee payment that made fighting their bogus claims worthless and perpetuated the myth that they “licensed” the patent, when it was really just a shakedown.
ETA - Yes, I know they aren’t completely ditching the Horst link…but still this is a massive change in strategy and design for Specialized.
That is a big thing. As covered in the Pinkbike video, they have used it since they bought it from Horst back in the early '90’s. I lived through this era and as a budding designer, poured over each and every full suspension design with a fine too comb.
The FSR / Horst Link provided real advantages over other designs of the early era. But as more smart people (Dave Weagle, etc.) got their heads and hands into suspension design, non-FSR designs gained performance and use among other brands.
Despite the drop of FSR for the carbon bikes, it remains on the aluminum bikes, so they are still placing their emphasis on the design until they figure out the next step to eliminate the bearing pivots. I envision them doing a hybrid aluminum sections with a short carbon section in the seatstays or chainstays in the future, but who knows.
Overall suspension design has gotten so good any more, that there aren’t any really “bad” designs. There are more choices about characteristics, like picking primary bike categories. Sounds like the new Spesh rears are better in some ways due to kinematic and shock changes. Those sound good to me, as I have loved all my FSR bikes, but noted the somewhat sluggish feel (specifically out of the saddle efforts) when compared to other designs (DW Link in particular).
Yup…agreed 100%. (I was also editing my post above to note that they aren’t completely dropping the Horst link).
back in the day, the easy way to “replicate” a Horst design was to move the chainstay pivot to a seatstay pivot…but that came with a lot of tradeoffs in terms of pedaling performance. What was interesting was that the Horst patent notes and claims TWO pivot points…a chanstay pivot AND a pivot “above and behind” the BB shell. Technically, if you did not have both pivots, you were not in violation of their patent.
But Specialized focused solely on the chainstay pivot and went after anyone who employed one, regardless of where the BB picot was placed. BB pivot below and in front of the BB, but also have a chainstay pivot? Not a patent violation, but they went after companies anyway. The proof of their strategy was that if you used a seatstay pivot and a pivot “above and behind” the BB, they didn’t care.
I think it would have been pretty easy to win a case in trial, but as I noted above, Specialized made the “license” fees so low-cost that it didn’t make fighting the case worthwhile. The actual amount charged was fractions of a percentage point vs. the cost of the bike, so easily absorbed…but, when taken in aggregate across multiple companies, was a tidy revenue stream for Specialized.