• Scott G-Zero FX20
• £1,379
• www.scottusa.com
• Scott UK 01670 712129

Scott’s sizable MTB range is divided into a few ranges. The Scott G-Zero FX20 is in the “Progressive” range, which equates to all-round bikes with a slight freeridey leaning. That’s a fairly popular part of the market, so how well does the FX20 fill its niche?

Frame

Scott have definitely got a bit of a motocross thing going on here. The first bit of the FX20 that catches your eye is the downtube fender/mudguard thing. It’s either wacky or distinctive. Actually, it’s probably both… The MXey theme continues through the graphics, with lots of stripey bits and big logos. The overall effect is just the right side of eyecatching. It could have been pretty garish, but the bike itself is essentially grey and black so they get away with it. In fact, we rather like it.

Underneath the decals and paint we have a 7005 butted aluminium frame. A fair bit of work’s gone into it. The baseball-bat downtube is as huge and wide-mouthed as a teenager’s trousers, while the shock mounts to a neat forged piece held in the corner of two kind of aero-section tubes that form what passes for the seat tube. A stub tube off the bottom bracket carries the front mech.

Out back is an asymmetric swingarm, with the left-hand stay running directly from the low forward pivot straight to the rear dropout. On the drive side it’s cranked upwards to clear the front mech. The swingarm’s a semi-monococque construction, with a sheet-formed front section and tubing at the back. A replaceable gear hanger and a disc mount finish things off.

Between the two halves of the frame is a RockShox BAR shock. It’s a simpler affair than the Dual Air SID shock, with just the one valve and a rebound adjuster. The negative spring sets itself when you set the main spring. Less adjustable but less scope for getting it wildly wrong, which is fine by us… There are three mounting positions for the rear shock, offering 95, 110 or 125mm of travel.

The de rigeur gussetry makes an appearance at al the key frame tube junctions. The cable routing is quite interesting, with a full-length rear derailleur housing and the rear brake house secured to the downtube with small clamps bolted into special bosses. A lot of riders are using full-length housings as an inexpensive alternative to the various sealed cables on the market – it’s simple and it works.

Components

At around £1,400 there’s enough room in the budget for very respectable components and the Scott doesn’t disappoint. The fork is a Manitou Black Sport. Travel can be converted between 100 and 120mm, but you have to take the fork apart to do it. We left it on the 120mm setting.

We’ve no complaints at all about the going and stopping bits. Shimano’s LX and XT groups provide most of the bits (the cassette’s a Deore), including the rather splendid LX cranks, complete with funky hollow bolts. Pedals are listed as “platform BMX style” although the test bike came with some Ritchey 959-alikes. Brakes are Hayes HFX-9, with a 205mm rotor up front.

Pretty much everything else is Scott-branded stuff. We like to see exotic finishing kit as much as the next man, but when it comes down to it we’d rather have own-brand entirely adequate bars, stems, seats and seatposts in return for a good frame and mechanical components. The only bit of Scott kit we didn’t really take to was the saddle. It matches the bike and everything, but it’s a bit mushy – handy for botched landings but not so good for mileage.

The presence of a couple of spacers underneath the stem is a neat touch, and means that you can fiddle with the stem height a bit to better suit the length of your arms and personal preference. If you want to run the saddle right down for freeride craziness you’ll need to cut the post down or it’ll foul the shock. Someone had rather enthusiastically done this to the test bike and left it barely long enough to get back up to just-riding-along height – something to watch for if you buy one.

Wheels are Scott hubs (they’re rebadged Quando items) laced to Rigida Taurus rims and shod with Scott Cougar 2.25in tyres. We’d rather see at least a Shimano rear hub and Mavic rims, but none of it gave us any trouble. In an intriguing bit of branding, the tyres carry the top half of the Scott logo and the rims the bottom half – watch out for that when you repair a puncture…

Ride

The first thing the new G-Zero pilot will notice is shortness. Our test bike was a Large and had a 23in top tube. Sounds generous, but rival manufacturers are speccing large bikes with 23.5-24in top tubes. The actual length of the tube isn’t the full story, though. The stated angles for the G-Zero are a 69.4° head angle, pretty standard fare for a freeridey full susser with a 120mm fork, and a 74° seat angle, which is unusually steep. The ability to alter the rear travel, which also changes the rear ride height, futzes with these numbers of course, but the combination of fairly laid-back front and upright rear remains.

That steeper-than-normal seat angle is what makes the top tube short. Scott have effectively pushed the saddle a bit forward relative to the rest of the bike, while leaving the bottom bracket and bars in the same place relative to the wheelbase. The effect of this is to put a bit more weight than usual over the front of the bike when the rider’s seated, which makes the Scott a lot steadier uphill than you’d expect. Relaxed front ends tend to wander around a bit on climbs, but the G-Zero surprised us with its ability to hold a line. Stand up and everything feels entirely conventional – the relationship between the remaining contact points is nothing unusual.

There is a downside. With the seat an inch closer to the bars than some bikes, the cockpit can feel a bit cramped when seated and there’s not much scope for stretching out. How much of a problem this is depends a lot on what sort of riding you’re doing. If everything’s substantially up or down it’s no big deal. If there’s a lot of level cruising it could get tiresome, although if you’re not in a hurry it’s fine.

We fiddled about a bit with the rear suspension travel. One of the quirks of the variable shock mounting points is that as you dial in more travel the BB height lifts and the angles get steeper. Not by much, but it’s there and perhaps slightly the reverse of what you’d want. The short (95mm) travel position felt a bit overfaced (we couldn’t muster the inclination to shorten the fork too), the 125 was cushy but slightly mushy under power and the 110mm probably our favourite. 125mm is quite a bit of travel to eke out of quite a small shock, and that long setting works the RockShox BAR pretty hard – we didn’t experience any serious problems but it just wasn’t quite as composed as some bikes with longer shocks and lower leverage ratios.

Suspension performance is generally entirely competent, though. It’s classic single pivot stuff – pretty sprightly under power, bit of kickback in the little ring going up over steppy bits – which is fine by us. As you’d expect, it’s great fun downhill. The Black fork is reassuringly stout and the short cockpit lets you hang back and let the suspension do the work. The Scott tyres are perfectly serviceable and the Hayes brakes pull things up with commitment. We had a few sketchy moments until we got used to their rather abrupt modulation, but get used to it we did.

We rode the G-Zero up and down proper mountains, round plenty of singletrack, off a few drops and over some jumps and it tackled the lot with aplomb. It’s not as heavy as it looks, and it’s not really a cliff-hucker, but if you’re a fan of the sturdier end of the all-round riding spectrum without being a complete nutjob, the Scott’s definitely a contender. Oh, and the fender works, too…

Verdict

We’d like a proper seat tube so we can put the seat down without fouling the shock, and the riding position (and looks) won’t be to everyone’s taste. But the G-Zero’s competitively (if not outstandingly) specced, did everything we asked it to and never failed to make us smile. Which can’t be bad.

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