• Santa Cruz Superlight Mountain
• £1,899
• Santa Cruz
• 01423 780088

This isn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, a new bike. Santa Cruz’s Superlight is firmly in the “classic” category – the design dates back to the original Heckler from 1996 or thereabouts. The Heckler was quite a beefy bike, so the Superlight was introduced with lighter tubing and an air shock. Then the Heckler went away, to return as a bigger, longer travel bike, leaving the Superlight standing almost alone in the 4in travel single-pivot arena. We’re looking at this one because as well as frames and build kits Santa Cruz is now doing complete bikes for those who don’t want to make too many decisions. Your only option with the Mountain is whether you get a red or silver one…

Frame

Simplicity is the watchword here. It’s amazing how little difference there is between this frame and an early Heckler – I’ve got a 1998 one and apart from minor things like the shape of the gussets they’re nigh-on identical. Nothing like getting it right first time… Actually there’s quite a bit of difference in the swingarm. There’s more metal welded between the two uprights, more machining on the uprights themselves, the shock mounting point has dropped slightly to work better with air shocks and things like the shock mount hardware and main pivots are sleeker. And it weighs a lot less – a bare Superlight frame and shock comes in at 5.3lb. There’s no funky tube shaping (signature cranked top tube excepted) or hydroforming going on here, just round, butted tubes.

The fundamentals, though, are unchanged. The swingarm pivot is above and ahead of the bottom bracket, tucked in behind the middle and outer chainrings, the shock is a long way away from it to give a nice low leverage ratio and the stays take the shortest available path to the dropouts. One thing the frame has never had is over-generous tyre clearance – it’s OK on the sides but nothing to write home about at the top. The WTB Weirwolfs fitted are fairly chunky for a 2.1in tyre but you’d be pushing it to get anything much taller in there.

You don’t get brake bosses, but you do get holes to put them in should you ever need them. The lack of a replaceable derailleur hanger may be a concern to some, but really it’s not a problem – experience has shown that you have to hit it very hard to bend it and you can get away with straightening it out at least a couple of times.

Cable routing is reasonably direct as suspension bikes go, and you get two sets of bottle bosses. One set is in the usual location and the other set is underneath the down tube. Don’t try and get a bottle out of there while riding, it’ll end in tears…

The finish is good and the paint seems to be nice and deep. If you’re buying a frame only you get a choice of lots of colours plus anodised options, but complete bike buyers get a choice or red or silver.

Components

Carrying on the simple theme, Santa Cruz has specced the Mountain along straightforward, lightweight lines. Up front is a Manitou Skareb Super fork with 100mm of travel. You don’t get the funky SPV internals of the higher-end Skarebs, but you do get the stout reverse-arch design, external rebound adjuster and compression/lockout knob. At the back a Fox RP3 shock holds the back end up.

Bolted to the frame is an almost complete Shimano LX groupset – the only exception is the Low Normal XT rear mech. This is the first chance we’ve had to have a proper go with the current generation of LX kit, and we’re impressed. You’re getting lightweight Hollowtech II outboard-bearing cranks, excellent disc brakes and slick shifting. We’re even getting to like Dual Control, although the LX units are distinctly more plasticky than the XT and XTR models. It all works a treat once you’ve figured out which way to waggle things to get the gear you want.

The LX hubs are laced to Mavic 717 Disc rims with butted DT spokes. 2.1in WTB Weirwolf tyres go around the outside, and WTB also supply the Rocket V Comp saddle. It’s a perfectly good perch, although the editorial buttocks aren’t particularly WTB shaped. Seatpost, bars and stem are all Easton EA50, and a pair of pleasantly tacky Lizard Skins grips tops it all off.

It’s all decent stuff, but there’s no getting away from the fact that the buying power of bigger brands means that you’ll get better kit for the same money elsewhere – for example, GT’s IDXC 1.0 gives you a Fox fork and full XT for a hundred quid less. But that’s the price you pay for buying into a relatively small brand, and it’s not like there’s any bits here that’ll let you down.

The whole lot came in at 12.6kg (27.7lb) on the BM scales – that’s for a Large bike with cheap’n’cheerful Shimano 520 pedals on it. If you’re looking for a cheaper option, the Superlight Trail has the same frame and fork but a Deore/LX/Easton EA30 package for £1,599.

Ride

Superlights have always been great bikes, and the emergence of more complicated designs hasn’t made them any worse. This is about as good as single-pivot bikes get, and that’s not damning with faint praise. The combination of pivot location and ProPedal keeps it sprightly and at speed in the big ring it’s impressively fluid. The low leverage ratio gives the shock an easy time of it, leading to a confident and planted feel. The only idiosyncracy that really stands out is a significant degree of pedal feedback in the inner ring that tends to make itself known at inconvenient moments like the back wheel going up a steppy bit on a steep climb. You can pedal through it but it’s distracting at first – many more sophisticated designs just let you sit and spin your way up that kind of stuff, but the SL needs a little more attention. That said, in many ways it’s a more involving ride and the sheer simplicity of it is a big benefit – service the shock and replace the bushings every so often and that’s about it.

The Skareb fork behaved a bit oddly at first, being reluctant to move off the top of its stroke and blowing through all the travel once it had, but after a bit of fiddling we found an air pressure sweet spot and got front and rear feeling satisfactorily balanced. The fork never got really plush, but then it’s an XC race fork so we wouldn’t really expect it to.

As for handling, well, it’s a delight. It’s not amazingly long (23.5in top tube on a Large), giving you plenty of scope for letting your weight do some work. You never feel like you’re just along for the ride – the bike encourages you to chuck it about a bit and have some fun.

Positives: Light, fast, fun, simple – a true classic.

Negatives: Pedal feedback, can’t match the spec of bigger names

Getting on a short-travel (yes, it looks like 100mm is short now) single-pivot bike was a breath of fresh air. Like corn flakes, we’d forgotten how good they can be. It’s amazing to think that this is essentially an eight-year-old design – it can still cut it in today’s company. Yes, the multi-pivot crowd beat it on plushness and pedal feedback, but the SL scores big on simplicity and involvement. It’d be good to see a better fork and some spanglier kit for the money, but Santa Cruz just isn’t buying stuff in the quantities of the big boys.

Performance: 5/5
Value: 4/5
Overall: 4/5