Atherton Bikes is celebrating their 5th birthday today, and in doing so gave us a sneak peek at a new bike in development. The UK-based mountain bike brand of probably the winningest gravity family ever, Atherton has come a long way from that first prototype DH bike made of carbon tubes bonded into 3D-printed lugs. And now it looks like they have an aluminum enduro bike up their sleeves.
Coming soon…
Happy 5th Birthday to Atherton Bikes
Atherton bikes, we wish you a Happy 5th Birthday.
The Athertons sent around a slew of photos celebrating the road map they’ve come from soft launching their own bike brand in mid-winter of 2019.
Check out their own wrap-up, here.
From that soft rollout in January… to Rachel already winning on the world DH stage that June at Fort William…
…to ultra-limited consumer bikes for the start of year 2, to making more bikes available to the public, to now 4 bikes on offer. We’ve been following along intrigued since the beginning.
And we can’t wait to see more from Atherton Bikes.
Like for example, a…
Prototype alloy Atherton enduro bike
The only info we have about the new prototype bike project comes from this note: “Coming soon: The team are working hard on a new Aluminium product for release early this year.” But we can unpack enough from that image to be interested.
Bikepark-ready… check!
Fox 38 & DHX2… check!
We can’t really see what’s going on with the suspension, but the boxy seatstay extends further into the front triangle, so it’s not teh exact same DW-link design as the current AM.170 – their latest new ti & carbon bike. But there is still a black rocker link here, attached to the seattube and driving a vertically-oriented coil shock, so it might not be all that different.
A Fox 38 Factory fork means enduro, with 160-180mm of travel up front. A 170 or 180mm Fox 38 is standard option for their current carbon & ti AM170. That matching Fox DHX2 coil rear shock supports the idea of big rear wheel travel.
The aluminum Stan’s Flow wheels, mechanical shift rear derailleur, and FSA Gradient 35 stem & Alloy 25 low-rise bar fits with a solid, but not ultra-expensive build. Purple Haze edition Hayes Dominion A4 disc brakes, are just a nice touch, though.
Headtube, downtube, toptube, seattube, chainstay & seatstay all look to be the same gray color of raw alloy. That should mean much lower cost of entry to buy an Atherton enduro bike.
Thus, the Athertons say their new HQ in Machynlleth in Wales is ready to “allow the company to build and scale in line with their ambitions”. So will that mean bringing alloy production in-house too?
Our attention has been piqued. And we’ll share more as soon as we hear (or see) it!
