Imbbus

'The benchmark'

17. april 2009

Obscenely fast, fun and chaos-capable. Affordable all-mountain just got a new benchmark.

S temi besedami se začne popis testa kolesa Lapierre Zesty 314. Zapisan je na portalu Bikeradar.

Zesty je prevzel novo ekipo novinarjev in prepričal vse sodelujoče udeležence v prometu.

Expectations, benchmarks and fellow test riders were left way behind as we blitzed through our well-worn test trails at genuinely eye-watering speeds. It’s an easy, effortless speed machine in every situation.

Setting up the little red pointer on the seat tube lets you read your sag instantly against the seatstay calibrator while the simple rebound-adjust-only shock leaves no levers to worry about.

The suspension is slightly on the pert side under power, but it never wobbled, jacked up, kicked out or hung up obviously on flat-faced slams. It even took our local 6ft drop on with none of the usual palm and pedal whump we’d expect from a trail bike. So that’s another tick in the plus box for the Zesty, then.

Its speed is enhanced by assured stability and sweetly accurate handling from the extremely stiff, relaxed angle and long wheelbase frame.

A screw-through fork and more tyre bite would make it even more accurate, but even with a quick-release, the Zesty was generally out of sight of pursuers within a few corners or over random rock sections.

Detajli, s katerimi se poigrava Lapierre, impresionirajo vso občinstvo, ki svojim očem dopušča počivati na Francozih. Originalna izpoved se sliši takole:

Detailing on this £1,900 bike is enough to shame many £1,900 frames. The replaceable gear hanger, pivot caps, X-clamps for the continuous hose/cable routing, quick-release seat clamp and sag meter are all red anodised.

Any doubts about the usefulness of the carbon fibre rear mech protector vanished when we gouged a boardwalk savagely in a crash without even scuffing the shield or disturbing the indexing.

Skratka, new all mountain benchmark.