Six Badass Bikes

When you're bombing down a mountain at 35MPH, well-tuned suspension means everything. That’s why the shocks on downhill racing bikes like the Intense M6 are the focus of so much of attention and care. The M6 uses a rear shock with a titanium spring and monstrous 10.5 inches of travel -- more than most motorcycles -- and each shock is factory tuned to provide the right amount of resistance for the rider's weight. Match that kind of suspension with a super-strong aluminum frame and indestructible components, and you have one of the most advanced downhill bikes around.

For the last hundred years, bicycles have rolled around on two similar 26-inch wheels. But more recently, mountain bikers began experimenting with 29-inch wheels -- and the buzz about them keeps growing. Why? The bigger the wheel, the more easily it rolls over rocks and roots, and the more momentum it gives the moving rider. The problem: bigger wheels mean sluggish handling and slower acceleration. The folks at Trek believe they’ve found a solution: a bike with a big 29-inch wheel up front, a traditional 26-inch wheel on the back, and a frame carefully tweaked to handle as if it's on rails.

Plenty of bike manufacturers think they can make one bike that can ride all kinds of terrain, and their solution is usually some kind of "variable travel" dual-suspension bike. That designation means that you can dial the amount of suspension travel on your front and rear shocks to suit the terrain. Riding cross-country terrain today? Dial down your shocks’ travel so you can pedal efficiently without pedal bob. Hitting the bigger, gnarlier terrain? Dial up to more travel, so you can soak up bigger obstacles. Kona has figured out a way to allow the bike to dial itself to the terrain automatically using a variable pivot point called the "Magic Link." It appears on their Coiler Deluxe model.

In road racing, it’s all about the carbon fiber -- and this Specialized S-Works Ruby SL has as much of the superlight, superstiff stuff as a Ferrari. Almost every square inch of the frame is carbon, including all the tubes, joints, and reinforced areas, but it doesn’t stop there. The whole front fork -- even the section that extends into the bike and attaches to the handlebars -- is carbon fiber, as are the hubs, the bed of the seat, the handlebars, seatpost, and parts of the drivetrain. Where metal must be used, it’s usually titanium, chosen for its superlight strength and its ability to dampen road vibrations.

Carbon fiber isn’t the only way to make a light, stiff, and vibration-absorbent road bike. In fact, there’s another material that works equally well: bamboo. That’s right: do business with California-based Calfee Designs, and you can have yourself an ultra-high end road bike made out of panda food. Believe it or not, bamboo is an exceedingly strong and stiff building material. That’s why Calfee offers a 10-year breakage warranty with each of its bamboo frames.

Few pieces of man-made machinery look as if aliens could have left them behind, but the Orbea Ordu definitely qualifies. From the side, it looks strangely flat, but get closer and you realize that each section of the bike is shaped to produce as little aerodynamic drag as possible. Using wind-tunnel testing and professional rider feedback, more and more bike manufacturers like Spain-based Orbea are using precise engineering and computer-aided testing to make bikes exponentially stiffer, faster, and lighter than they were even a few years ago.