Santa Cruz Bicycles

Bantam Mountain Bike Frame - 2015

Even in the age of high-tech synthetics and complicated suspension platforms, there's something to be said for the alloy, single-pivot Santa Cruz Bantam Mountain Bike Frame. It's light, it's stiff, and it's simple and durable enough to handle the daily dangers of all-mountain abuse. The Bantam does away with all the gee-whiz plastic and suspension "innovation" favored by the wonderbike crowd who think ride quality is measured by price tags in order to put the focus where we like it: applying watts to the trail.

During the suspension arms race, we've seen more than our fair share of wacky, complicated schemes that may ease the ride but multiply the possible points of failure exponentially. The beautiful simplicity of the Bantam's single-pivot design does away with all that, providing five flexible inches of travel built on super-stiff collet hardware and feeding power into an efficiently oversized 12x142mm rear axle. The rear end is matched with a low bottom bracket and a tapered head tube, which conspire to further increase stiffness and sticking lines. The Bantam's geometry mirrors Santa Cruz's 5010 race rocket, so it lets you clean those lines with aggressive flair that comes from the rider, not a high-priced luxury bike.

Given the focus we've devoted to what we love about the Bantam's proven design, we'd be remiss not to mention the bottom bracket. Santa Cruz again forgoes the latest trend masquerading as the new standard in favor of the real standard: threaded BSA. No creaking, no durability issues, no silly gimmicks. While we'd like to see all manufacturers return to the threaded standard, the extra time and expense that goes into it means there's no way that's happening. So Santa Cruz it is.