For the most part, Giant’s 2012 mountain bike line gets the BNG treatment – Bold New Graphics.
They are carrying over the Overdrive 2 tapered headtube design recently introduced on their 2012 road bikes. The 1.25″ to 1.5″ tapered HT will be on the:
- Faith 0
- Reign X0, X1
- Reign 0, 1
- Trance X Advanced SL 0, 1
- Trance X Advanced 0, 1
…and basically all the rest of their top end 0 and 1 level bikes, including the 29ers. One interesting tidbit from my conversation with their Canadian PM was this: The OD2 design is actually only a change in the headset’s upper cup, not the frame. So, you could buy a lower level bike and upgrade later by purchasing the right stem, fork and headset. Alternately, if you have a fork and stem you really like, or you get an OD2 frames but don’t want to commit to a new standard, you’d only have to put in a smaller headset cup in the top. This also means you could potentially set up any other brand bike that has a reasonably modern tapered headtube with this new OD2 style front end.
The bike above is the new-for-2012 Trance X Advanced, a mixed media middle ground between the full carbon Trance and the all alloy model. Details and pics, including some rebadging on the women’s side, behind the break…
For the bikes with Overdrive 2, Giant had Fox and Rockshox press new steerer tubes into the forks to accommodate the 1.25″ upper headset cup. Interestingly, the OD2 system isn’t making its way to the cyclocross bikes yet, but we wouldn’t be surprised if it showed up there next year.
The new Trance X Advanced uses the Trance X Advanced SL’s carbon fiber front triangle but an alloy rocker arm and rear triangle. It only adds around 100g to the frame, but lets Giant bring in an upper middle price point to the range that satisfies both the wallet and the scale.
25.74lbs on the scale for (I think) a Large. Possibly Medium.
For the ladies, the Cypher becomes the Trance XW and gets some nice, subtle graphics on the top tube.
