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SLINGSHOT
At the end of the seventies Mark Groendal noticed his bike (one of those little motorbikes for kids) was particularly comfortable. Upon further inspection, he found out that the down tube was broken, thus letting the front end flex and absorb hit better. This set his mind at work.
His mind must still have been working when, yars later, and he ended up building, after a number of experimentations, an incredible vehicle: a BMX, without a down tube, with the top tube joining the seat pipe via a composite board (originally a cut ski). Two steel cables, kept in tension by coil springs attached to the bottom bracket, limited excessive flex. Yes, two cables instead of one down tube. It was the year 1980.
With time the design improved. The bike still rocks, though. The two cables have been substituted by a single one, instead of the piece of ski now there is a proprietary, reliable, 3M composite board.
The result is a stable and comfortable bike, a real blast to ride on technical climbs, where the movement of the top tube glues the rear end to the ground allowing the rider to float over bumps.
The energy, stored by the coil spring compressing during the power stroke, is returned when it gets back to its initial position, right during the dead spot of pedalling, when the rider gets no benefit from his effort. The result is a push forward, the so-called “Slingpower”, which balances the power released by the athlete’s legs.
In 1990 Slingshot was nominated by the mountain biking bible, Zapata Espinoza’s Mountain Bike Action, “ONE OF THE GREATEST BIKES OF ALL TIMES”. After that, even “Bicycling Magazine” and the German “Sportrad” gave rave reviews to that oh-so-strange “bike with a cable”. Mountain Bike Action testers, in 1999, didn't change their thoughts, notwithstanding the change of the magazine's chief editor, now the Mantis genius Richard Cunningham. That weird frame performed so well to “ make oversize down tubes seem silly”, and “goes to show how function overcomes logic”, “defying the laws of physics”.
With time, Slingshot has slowly gained its market share, a niche of real aficionados. So, the factory has been able to survive the closure of many of the most historical brands. And never mind if, at an American bike show, the worthy Tom Ritchey said, in front of the incredible prototype “that will never work”.
During the nineties Groendal exploited the particular structure of the bike for a particular applicatio. The elaboration of the fold tech project allowed Slingshot to start the production of foldable bikes which perform as well as “normal” ones. A joy for world travellers: these bikes have their advantages when you have to load them on planes, trains or buses in your tours around Europe or America. The same can be said for those fathers leaving for holidays, having to deal with too much luggage and too little space in their minivans.
Nowadays, the coming of 29-inch wheels has allowed Slingshot to add an important milestone to its MTB range: the Farmboy, with aluminium top tube, steel rear end, and Reynolds 853 seat tube. The stability and comfort of the new geometries perfectly match the Slingpower technology. Farmboy is already a perfect bike to ride with a rigid fork; with a suspension fork it will smoke any 26-inch racer, be it a hardtail or a full susser.
Otherwise, if you are a dyed in the wool, old school hardtail lover, you can still find plenty of satisfaction with the Ripper, an aluminium race-ready machine, or with the Fold Tech, now with an aluminium top tube.
