SANTA CRUZ BICYCLES

THE NEW 5010

GET CREATIVE WITH YOUR SURROUNDINGS

The 5010 turns obstacles into features. Its nimble, poppy feel makes even the most mundane rides feel like they’re loaded with features to hop, skip and jump over. It’s the kind of bike that makes new trails feel as familiar as the back of your hand.

27.5 is the fun-sized wheel size. Smaller wheels provide an ideal balance between toughness and weight saving making them the most fleet-footed (or quick fingered) whether launching logs or weaving through stumps. With its quick and agile character, the 5010 has become a go-to plaything for progressive riders the world over and the only contender on any backyard trails.

It’s a bike that goes harder than its vital stats may suggest. A 140mm-travel fork is paired with 130mm at the rear, the lower-link VPP configuration of which leaves you feeling there’s a lot more travel at hand. And you can choose how out of hand you want to get, as this pocket rocket fits all sizes and types of rear shocks.

It’s no handful either. The relatively slack head angle makes it predictable to steer, the relatively low BB height turns like it’s on tracks and the short chainstays make this plaything easy to pick up and throw around.

No matter how much of a big kid you are the bike grows with you. We’ve tailored the geometry so frame size is matched to size specific chainstay lengths and super-low standover heights make it feel (almost) like that BMX you had as a kid. Okay, perhaps that’s a bit nostalgic, but the 5010’s certainly a perfect gateway to the highs only proper mountain biking can offer.

The 5010’s balance and poise can turn any rider from cautious neophyte into a fully fledged flyer. The legendary Santa Cruz fit, finish and quality construction make this pocket rocket tougher than a Tonka toy. Fun and games are guaranteed, and the frame, linkages and optional Reserve wheels come with a lifetime warranty.

So don’t be afraid, roll up your sleeves and go get creative.

FIRST RIDE REPORT
Despite the craziness of the world, Santa Cruz managed to get us an early 5010 test bike and did our best to build it up and get it out on the trail for at least a couple rides for an early ride report. If you read our 5010 review last year, you know we were huge fans of the bike and really like the playful spirit and intent of what Santa Cruz is offering.

It’s too early to tell how exactly the new 5010 compares to our old favorite as we’ve not been able to fully test it on all our usual test tracks, but so far, so good. The suppleness off the top is certainly improved on the new 5010 and we felt the bike handled square-edged hits better, but we’re going to need to keep riding it to see what, if any trade offs have been made to the high-riding, springy and easy to hop feel of the old 5010.

In terms of standout features thus far, we’d say that Santa Cruz has certainly paid attention to riders who are looking for a Freeride-BMX- mountain bike blend. Maybe FreeMX will be the next big category in MTB, shit down-country is officially a thing…so why not? Even though we got sent an XL, (we normally ride large test bikes at 5’11) we were very impressed with how snappy and easy this thing is to maneuver. The bike manuals like a dream. The rear end will go exactly where you want it, and sometimes it’ll go far beyond that point into full blown loose-town. On a couple of occasions we’d be entering a corner and before we knew it the back end was power-sliding around the outside. It made us feel bad ass, but certainly surprised us. Now that we know it’s coming, the trick will be to do it faster and faster while still keeping both feet on the pedals.

The Santa Cruz 5010 is honestly one of the purest mountain bikes in our opinion. It’s not designed to make you faster, it doesn’t dream of training rides and Santa Cruz doesn’t claim it’ll put you on top of the podium. This bike is designed for riders that would rather focus on fun! Perfecting skills, building weird janky stunts, trying things that will almost certainly kill your strava time, but will lead to hours of fun and endless smiles as you keep trying to roll out that fakie landing. Maybe the reason we like the 5010 so much is because we’re sentimental and remember the hours we spent as kids building things that were fun, not fast.

Whatever the reason may be, we certainly know that while the Santa Cruz 5010 test hours will be the same (if not more) than many of our other bikes, the number of miles we’re going to cover is going to be greatly reduced as we’ll be parked up scouting tree rides, 180s, manual pads and anything else we can find to slow us down while on the trail.