Specialized for 2007
Posted by Charles Wed, 02 Aug 2006 21:57:00 GMT
Specialized gathered together a few hundred of their favorite bike dealers from all over the US to roll out the 2007 model year bikes and product. The venue moved back and forth between the Silver Legacy in Reno and Northstar at Tahoe. Northstar’s closed to mountain bikes this year, you say? Sure… unless you were a Specialized dealer during the week of the roll out. We were treated to no lift lines, low traffic on the mountain, and some pretty high level attention from the Northstar staff, but that ignores the main topic of this post. Bikes. That’s what I’m bloggin about.
Specialized continues to dominate high technology for road and mountain bikes. They own some incredible technology and tools to make light, strong, solid and serviceable bikes like no other company. The engineering staff in Morgan Hill sits at their Sun workstations every day improving existing cutting edge technology, and this years line up displays the product of that effort. The hot selling Roubaix is now available in an S-Works level version, prices are dropping and models are increasing for Carbon mountain bikes, and the freeride, dirt jump and aggro mountain line is just exploding.
The big news, however, is that Specialized is getting into the suspension game. Specialized will now be producing its own front and rear suspension components, taking the complete bike as one system approach. This starts with the Future Shock fork and rear shock on the carbon Enduro SL, and brings us a sub 27 pound bike with 6 inches of front and rear travel, the legendary Horst Link 4 bar rear end, and a fork that will give you tuning options you never dreamed of. If you click the photo to the left, you will see a larger version of that photo showing me with a Carbon Enduro SL outfitted with the Specialized fork.
Just as revolutionary, although perhaps not as glamorous, are evolutionary changes to helmets, eye wear, shoes and tires. A lot of these things will be trickling into Passion soon. Take a run by and have a look.
