First Look: Cervélo's New ZFS-5 XC Bike
Cervélo's lineup has historically been about drop bars, skinny tires, and stiff frames, but with athletes expanding their race interests the Canadian brand has started to push into the mountain bike world. Things are still decidedly lycra-clad, as their second entry into the flat bar world (they launched a hardail last season) comes in the form of an XCO race bike: the ZFS-5.
It's no surprise that the ZFS-5 closely resembles another bike in the Pon holdings catalog, the similarly sporty Santa Cruz Blur. There are a few differences between the two, so let's see what makes Cervélo's race bike unique.
The 100mm variant.
And the 120mm.
The ZFS-5 comes in a 100 or 120mm setup, with geometry differences accompanying the two. The head angle goes from 66.7° to 67.8°, giving the bike a trail or race track focused handling depending on your fork choice. Reach numbers grow by about 20-25mm per size, and stack heights are reasonably high for a bike with racy intentions. Each size gets its own chainstay length, ranging from 432mm on the S to 440mm on the XL.
Looks quick.
Cervélo implemented a flex-stay single pivot design for the frame, which is in keeping with a lot of competitive race bikes these days. Again the design is rather close to that of the Blur, which impressed our team with the climbing traction and overall comfort it was able to deliver in such a light package.
Goes down.
And back up.
Keep an eye out for the ZFS-5 at the first World Cup XCO race in Nove Mesto this weekend, under two Jumbo Visma riders. Piloted by Cyclocross World Champion Fem van Empel and veteran XC champ Milan Vader, the new Cervélo is sure to be moving fast between the tape.
ZFS-5 will be available Summer 2023. Build, pricing, and final spec will be published at that time.
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You used to get differences when companies used pivots near the dropout, but flex stays (something laughed at when cannondale used them in the 00's) are easy to engineer in carbon so there really isnt much you can do without just adding weight back there too.
And if I could race XCO on a mostly-standardized $3500 spec bike with affordable wear parts (maybe Shimano Deore or SLX) and replacement parts (like $50 Maxx Terra tires), I’d totally do it. Maybe some brands could team up...Shimano and Trek might be a good tie-up. As long as they don’t call it a Shitrek =P
Using myself as an example, after riding some bikes from smaller brands (I was more worried about looking cool vs. riding what I liked) I still find myself back on a Trek because they are easy to hop on and feel intuitive to ride, and they are easy to set up. In the end, that's what I want for my after work rides - easy to ride and easy to set up. They also have dealers everywhere meaning you have support wherever you travel.
I'm glad the smaller brands exist though because, to your point, they include the unique features that the big brands can't because they know they cater to a smaller, and likely more educated/experienced customer.
I still feel like a clone on such a popular bike brand. But it rides.
When you're dealing with 100mm of travel none of those things matter nearly as much. Just place the single pivot such that theres a good amount of antisquat (chaingrowth) and who cares after that since with only 100mm of travel you're not likely to get "too much" chaingrowth ever. The same for compression curves- 99.99% of the time a small volume air can is going on that thing, so you can basically have a straight, slightly rising curve and you're fine. Exotic curves don't really help with such short travel anyways.
@maglor: wait until you discover road bikes
But I get what you're saying. Why even go through the effort of creating a new frame if it ends up being almost the exact same thing. Especially since that product manager from Santa Cruz who was on the podcast recently said that the engineers of all the PON brands consult each other anyways.
Pon's general stategy when buying brands seems to be to keep them doing what they do best and not interfere too much. Otherwise Santa Cruz would have been renamed to Gazelle years ago :-)
Edit: on second read, I guess the geo is a bit longer and steeper? I'm trying to think of ways that could have been done in the same moulds, because this bike looks EXACTLY like the Blur/Wilder down to the finest details. I can't imagine that they'd make new moulds just to make a bike that looks precisely like the bike it's based on under a different label.
I also think that this isn't targeted at us mountain bike crowd, it's recognized most of us will just buy the Blur (unless you're a masochist who hates your mechanic, and yes you definitely aren't doing the wrenching yourself, and wants headset cable routing). The target is Gary who's been riding a Cervelo since the 90's and has heard how much fun his riding buddies are having on this legendary "singletrack" all without the risk of getting hit by a bro texting on his phone with his car. He walks into his road loving bike shop and says tell me about these here mountain bikes I keep hearing about, and boom $10k Cervelo out the door. He's probably never heard of Santa Cruz the bike brand.
@tgent: I'm a Cruz rider, but pending a look inside the OS headtube upper, would prefer this
I'm curious to see how Fem carries over her cyclocross fitness to MTB, considering the ~3 month break from racing.
Quite rare to see a straight downtube, only Mondraker and Antidote come to mind.
I just visually like straight downtubes. I'm not sure whether these curves really get in the way. Often you already have one foot forwards so I suppose that one still takes the hit before the downtube does.
This is the bike for them.
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Edit: maybe not the same moulds as the geo is a bit different, but I'm wondering if they found a way to modify the geo using modified linkages/headsets since the frame itself looks the same as the Blur/Wilder down the the finest details.
Plus you get proper cable routing and a slightly slacker headset that's going to give more stability at speed but won't really give up any low-speed handling in real-world use.