It's odd that simply going consumer-direct suddenly provided Intense with this type of information and an untapped market of people without Intense shops around. Surely they must have, or maybe it wasn't enough to see real-world patterns of the bikes that people actually want to buy it was obfuscated by what dealers pick with their bulk purchases. Was Intense not collecting this type of data before? Through Rider Direct, we learned that a lot of our customers also wanted lighter, more responsive bikes that were a better match for their home trails."Ī direct line from consumer to business apparently resulted in the ability to perform user research, analyze user behaviour and get validation. We started getting orders for shorter-travel models, like our Spider, that dealers and distributors rarely bothered with. What I find most interesting is the top quote of "Rider Direct has taught us a lot. The forward position over the bike takes some bite from the rear tire when the grades get steep, so I had to be mindful to put more pressure over the rear end. Its 74-degree seat angle feels just right for high tempo climbs. The steering, in general, feels light and responsive - which I would expect from wheels that are lighter than any hoops I had ridden all year.Ĭross-country and trail riding are often measured by the climbing involved, and a good XC bike is supposed to make that job a lot easier. The stretched out cockpit, paired with the 50-millimeter stem keeps the front wheel planted and the steering precise while climbing steep pitches. I moved the saddle forward one centimeter on the medium-sized frame and I still needed a few miles to acclimatize. Initially, I was concerned that the slight rocking of the shock was sucking the life from my legs, but as it turned out, I was climbing and accelerating in much taller gears than I am accustomed to. The handling was far tamer than my recollection of cross country, with none of the front-end push in the turns that steeper steering geometry paired with longer stems is infamous for. If there was a flaw in the new bike's design or handling, it didn't show up on that day. It weighs one pound more than the $8499 Factory build and its MSRP is two thousand dollars less. The medium-sized second tier Elite XC that I have been riding weighed 22.8 pounds (sans pedals) on the Park Tool scale. Intense went all out on the parts spec of its flagship Sniper Factory XC, with Enve wheels, SRAM XX1 Eagle drivetrain - the list goes on to support its MSRP, but elsewhere, the team makes use of house-branded components and some intelligent mixing and matching of drivetrain and cockpit parts that offer up a busload of performance at surprisingly low weight figures, and much more attainable MSRPs. Plenty of stand-over clearance is afforded by the deeply curved top tube, and the single down tube water bottle location is well placed for racing. Titanium hardware, well-concealed hoses and cables, thick noise-reducing pads on the chainstay and the underside of the down tube, and a pull-out lever in the rear axle to hasten wheel changes are just a handful of them. Chad says the differing offsets help keep the XC bike's steering on point while climbing and puts some teeth into the Trail model's technical handling.ĭetails catch the eye throughout the chassis. The longer-travel Trail models run Fox 34 forks with 51-millimeter offsets and a similar Fox DPS shock. Top XC models are outfitted with Fox's Step-Cast 32 forks with a 44-millimeter axle offset and Factory DPS shocks (Kashima, of course). (Spoiler alert: they share the same factory.) At 21 pounds and some change (10kg), the top-drawer Sniper Factory XC can shamelessly walk the runway with the likes of Scott's Spark - the racebike that sets the bar for dual-suspension on the Pro Tour. Two versions: Peterson embraced the Sniper project as his own, and ultimately, two models were slated for production: The 100-millimeter-travel Sniper XC, and a more aggressively spec'ed 120-millimeter-travel Sniper Trail. Success for the project came in the form Intense's Chad Peterson - a self-proclaimed cross-country geek who puts in well over a hundred miles a week in one of the more technical zones in Southern California. The mandate for those progressive numbers, however, came with a powerful caveat: the Sniper would not be produced unless its weight and pedaling efficiency were equal to or better than current cross-country World Cup superbikes. The decision was made to go with progressive geometry - a crazy-for-cross-country 67.5-degree head tube angle, with a super-sized top tube designed to pair with stems in the range of 40 to 50 millimeters, and a pedal friendly 74-degree seat tube angle.
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