Santa Cruz has been giving their 27.5″ mountain bikes mixed-wheel size Mullet upgrades in recent years, and the 5010 is the latest to join the “business up front, party in the back” mentality. The popular, playful carbon trail bike sports the same 130mm VPP/140mm fork travel as before, but with slightly tweaked geometry and suspension kinematics to better suit the 29er front/27.5 rear balance, both up and down hills. There are also matching Juliana Furtado versions as always, too.
Plus, it looks like a more affordable alloy 5010 is on the horizon, as well!
Santa Cruz 5010 Carbon Mullet trail bike
The new mullet version of the 5th generation Santa Cruz 5010 Carbon looks almost exactly the same as the old bike if you don’t notice that bigger front wheel. And that seems intentional. Santa Cruz seems to have worked hard to keep the new bike’s “jump-happy, slalom-turn loving” character pretty much the same, even down to maintaining the same bottom bracket height – don’t mess with success, amirite?!
But the bigger front wheel brings improved grip & rollover down rougher trails, so the bike did deserve some tweaks too.
Mullet Trail Bike geometry & suspension updates
To keep that playful trail bike ride the new 5010 gets ever so slightly 0.5° slacker, more or less a few mm longer Reach up front, and ~7mm longer chainstays out back to balance the almost 2cm taller front end that comes with the 29er front wheel. As introduced in v4, front & rear center lengths are size specific, as is the stiffness of the carbon layup of each size, so every rider gets the same balanced trail feel. Plus, there’s even one larger size now, too (XS-XXL)!
You still get the Hi/Lo flip chip at the lower shock mount that offers a tiny 0.3° impact to head/seat angles while raising/lowering BB height a correspondingly small 3-4mm.