Orbea, which makes some fast bikes for the likes of Julien Absalon, has for the past three years been building some fast bikes for the European gravity-oriented enduro crowd, too.
Designed for racing multi-stage rally-like races that have as much up as down (sometimes with a lot more downhill), their bikes race in the Avalanche Cup Enduro Series (see video for POV footage from an the Megavalanche. Brendan Fairclough is piloting, fast forward throughout, there are some sick technical sections they bomb over, but the start is pure madness.).
For 2010, the Rallon is getting a full makeover and moving from a single-pivot design that’s reminiscent of Marin bikes to a new, as-yet-undisclosed layout that Orbea USA National Sales Manager Ronnie Points says will have a very linear spring curve.
“Orbea started designing a bike for this type of racing three years ago. The criteria these racers look for seems to be build up the lightest 6″ travel mountain bike that you can, then race it crazy fast in a rally / time trial setting,” said Points.
Contradicting the long travel, the new Rallon will have short chainstays and a 73º seat angle to climb well. The frame is a triple butted, highly hydroformed coned aluminum frame. Only about 500 will be made the first year, probably only 100 will make it to the U.S. Target price is under $3,000 to start, and a little over $5,000 for better spec’d models, and there will be a Truvativ Hammerschmidt equipped version.
The new frames leave their factories in March and hit U.S. shores near the end of the month, look for it in dealers by first week of April. We’ll have more finite specs and details, and maybe some pics, around the end of next week.
Rallon (ray-yohn), loosely translates to “rapid fire”. Given the terrain in this video, the new Rallon better be like big-boy pants with wheels. Someone needs to bring an event like this to the U.S…Mike, are you seeing this?
This is the current top-of-the-line Rallon XXX, weighing in at about 30.25 lbs with 160mm travel. Look for a very different bike come Spring.
Oh, and there are some new more bikes *cough, ‘cross* that we’re not supposed to tell you *hack, 29er* about coming out this Summer, so you’ll just have to stay tuned. Uuucch, I really need to get this cough taken care of before I get into trouble.
