After being acquired by rival suspension manufacturer Fox, the future of Marzocchi was in question. While their reps weren’t really able to answer the question of why they were brought into the fold, they were able to reassure us that the Marzocchi brand would carry on with its own unique take on mountain bike suspension. We took that to mean they’ll keep their look and internal technology, so don’t expect Kashima coats and FIT4 damping cartridges to pop up in the Italian brand’s catalog anytime soon. You’ll probably see some sharing of technologies where it makes sense for production efficiencies, like possibly with that Marzocchi Transfer post shown above (which may simply replace the Espresso dropper post they showed in 2015).
Fortunately, features like their Air Adjust should stay. It’s a brilliantly simple design that lets you adjust air volume by turning an external knob (as opposed to adding or removing spacers inside the air chamber). This not only gives you much finer control over the adjustment, but it also lets you see the effects of different air volumes in real time…or even adjust them based on terrain without tools.
One change they are contemplating is switching the rebound knobs to red and compression knobs to blue, to match industry norms. Personally, we think they should stick with their own color scheme, not only because it looks better, but also to differentiate themselves. One justification was to make it easier for riders to know which knob does what, but honestly, if you need color coding to know what you’re doing…