Pivot is a new bike brand launched by Chris Cocalis, founder of Titus. It had an impressive number of bikes at Outdoor Demo (and in the main Interbike show) for a new outfit, although apparently they’d been welding frames two days beforehand. They were looking pretty well-finished for all that, though.

What the Pivot bikes certainly aren’t are Titus clones. Cocalis has moved away from the conventional four-bar linkage and adopted Dave Weagle’s DW-Link design as found on Iron Horse and Ibis bikes. The Pivot implementation, though, is particuarly eyecatching, with a swoopy, semi-monocoque seat tube assembly holding the two short links.

There are a couple of notable frame features. The BB shell eschews screw-in bearings in favour of a direct press-fit. To get everything in the right place, the shell is 92mm wide, which lets Pivot flare the downtube out to huge dimensions and get significantly wider (and hence stiffer) bearing spacing for the lower linkage.

Two models are available initially, the Pivot  Mach 4 and Pivot Mach 5, with 4 or 5in of travel respectively. We rode the Mach 5, and found it to be really rather good. We like the DW-Link system – it offers a taut, controlled ride that manages to be absorbent but communicative at the same time. Combined with the sturdy Pivot chassis and the kind of finely-honed handling that you’d expect from a Titus alumnus and you get a bike that could really shake things up if and when it reaches the UK.