New Santa Cruz trail bike – 20 years in the making

The new Santa Cruz Bronson with its 150mm frame and 650b wheels (27.5 inches) is certainly a looker.

From afar, the colour combination and design gives it a cool appearance, but up close, it’s the technology and quality of engineering that makes this bike pretty special.

Santa Cruz Bicycles was founded in 1993. Over the past 20 years it has manufactured 19 models of mountain bike, made from either carbon fibre or aluminium, out of a factory in Bronson street, Santa Cruz, California. Having recently moved to a new factory across town, the all-new Bronson bicycle is testament to the years of designing and refining at its old address.

Following months of secret testing, the Bronson has just been launched and will be flaunting what its made of during the 2013 Enduro World Series campaign.

Bronson features a range of innovative technology including Santa Cruz’s next generation VPP suspension. This patented counter-rotating link design allows for design flexibility and manipulation of shock rates for a huge diversity of uses.

According to the company, “You won’t find this kind of stuff – whether it be quality of hardware or versatility of design or chassis integrity – anywhere else.”

Santa Cruz also utilises some unique carbon fibre manufacturing techniques including a one piece lay-up process that allows the engineers to control the outside and well as the inside shape, and to compact the fibre layers during the lay-up. This eliminates gaps between layers, and keeps resin from migrating to the inside of the tubes, or allowing delamination during the moulding process.

For a peak into its product development process, Santa Cruz has created the video below but if you want to see a member of the team in the flesh, come along to Develop3D Live on 16 April where Joe Graney, Santa Cruz’s director of engineering and quality, will be giving a presentation. It’s bound to be good.