Enduro courses in europe, the land where this bike calls home, make most U.S. courses seem smooth. So the Spicy 527’s 6-inch-travel aluminum frame is beefy as hell, along with its component spec, including the 160-millimeter RockShox Pike and Michelin’s Advanced Reinforced Gum-X and Magi-X rubber–some of the burliest tires on the market.
Make no mistake; the
Spicy came to shred. Scanning the geometry chart will reaffirm this
notion, but one steep descent will solidify it. There’s a sense of fearlessness
and indestructibility that come with the Spicy. But those things apparently
aren’t very light. At 34.5 pounds with pedals, you’ll need some strong stems to
get up the climbs. To help you with this is Lapierre’s E:I automatic shock
system, which uses sensors on the bike to read the trail and rider and
automatically switch the shock between modes.
The second-generation E:I system has been pared down to the bare
necessities–3 sensors, a battery and a processor cleverly tucked next to the
stem. There’s just one button and an L.E.D. Riders can cycle between open,
medium and locked, or stick it in auto mode and forget about it–which is what
this thing is all about.
It’s pretty cool: Accelerometers on the fork and stem, and the internal
cadence sensor on the bottom bracket constantly tell the shock whether to be
open, medium or locked. When coasting it’ll stay open even if the trail is
smooth. It figures, if you aren’t pedaling you don’t need platform. But once
you start pedaling, it’ll automatically close the shock until the
accelerometers feel an impact. It’s pretty fast, but not quite fast enough to
call the transitions seamless.
It takes a couple pedal strokes for the cadence sensor to realize that
the crank is turning. The system can get confused on undulating terrain,
constantly going from open to closed instead of putting itself in the medium
setting. Also, there’s a bit of lag in at the RockShox Monarch shock’s switch.
All these things will improve as technology advances.
Once I stopped looking down at the constantly changing L.E.D. and
realized that the servo wasn’t a robot chasing me down the trail, I found that
the system allowed me to focus on the trail instead of flipping switches, which
is really the whole point. There’s no question that Lapierre’s system works.
Perhaps this is the future of suspension technology. But is it better than
mechanical systems that are stiffer when pedaling, softer when shredding
already?
PRICE 5000$