Mountain Bike Roundup: Old school, new school & make ya drool

The Centurion No Pogo won “Bike of the Year 1997” from a German magazine. It came race ready with a Shimano XT triple and V-brakes, Rockshox Indy SL and rear coil shock and my personal favorites of the era, the IRC Mythos tires. My, how times have changed. Check it out, and some much, much more modern carbon full sussers for everything from Marathon to Enduro to XC race, below…

The Rockshox Deluxe is back, but it’s gone to air rather than coil.

Shimano introduced the multi-lever linear pull brakes to bring the pads directly into the rims in a straight path, adding power and more control until disc brakes could take over. Centurion mountain bikes don’t come Stateside, but you’ll find their complete line at Centurion.de.

Apidura doesn’t make bikes, they make kick ass touring bags. This rig was outfitted for a recent multi-day bike packing trip by one of their employees. We thought the cockpit had an interesting layout, and he really maxed out the number of bags attached to the frame.

The Pilot Cycles Primum 29er XC Race is a beautiful handmade titanium bike out of Germany that can be had with this standard gearing layout or a Rohloff geared hub. Full custom frames from €2,499.

Simplon had a couple new full suspension bikes that move the travel up from the bikes above. The Cirex 120 29er puts a 120mm travel RS-1 up front with 120mm in the rear, both connected with the XLoc Full Sprint dual hydraulic remote.

Meant for marathon racing, the lightweight build saves grams with the Magura MT8 brakes.

Jump up to the Rapcon and you’ve got your choice of 140mm or 160mm travel and switches to 27.5″ wheels. Like the Cirex, front travel is matched to rear.

Also with 160mm rear wheel travel is the Polygon Collosus N9, which uses their intricate dual linkage, quasi “floating” design to house the rear shock.

Even with all that, there’s still room for a front derailleur mount.

The Dartmoor DJ bike wasn’t photo’d for the bike necessarily, but for the color coordination. Not just on the bike (grips, tires, saddle), but also for the clothing behind it, assembled by their German distributor. Everything’s gotta match, yo.

Oooooor, it can just go crazy. We’ve seen some wild graphics from Rie:sel Designs before, and this full suspension bike shows off their knack for more than artwork. It’s all printed decals, but if you can find a seam anywhere on it, you’ve got better eyes than us:

Check out all their small goods at Riesel-Design.com for these graphics on fenders, saddles, water bottles, shirts and more. Or if you just need zip ties in any color under the rainbow.