Santa Cruz Bicycles
Santa Cruz
As the most experienced Santa Cruz dealer in South Africa, we are proud to stock the entire Santa Cruz bicycles range. For more information please call us on 0216715008 or email [email protected]
Santa Cruz Blur
The Blur is our ride fast, ride far, ride-harder-than-your-heart-can-take XC race bike.
Light enough to scorch hot laps and tough enough to endure a long-distance beating, the Blur does it all without compromise. No matter how demanding your next XC endeavor, the Blur is ready to go full gas, 24/7.
Make no mistake, at just 2060g this is our lightest ever 100mm full suspension frame. The ultra efficient VPP® suspension design, complemented by a dual remote lockout and super stiff carbon frame, means you’ve got more thrust on demand than SpaceX.
The one-piece carbon VPP® rear triangle shares a similar twin upright architecture to our World Cup-winning downhill bikes. Paired with a one-piece carbon front end it delivers a lateral stiffness and tracking ability you just don’t see on featherweight bikes of this genre.
Confidence-inspiring geometry and components worth their salt allow you to take those sketchy overtaking lines that are the difference between getting on the podium or ‘winning’ the wooden spoon.
Key Features:
Available in:Carbon C & Carbon CC
Wheel size: 29″
Front travel: 100mm
Rear travel: 100mm
Santa Cruz Tallboy 4
If ever there was a gravity riders’ XC bike, the Tallboy is it.
The new 120mm Tallboy takes a leap further into what short-travel bikes really are capable of. With kick-ass lower-link VPP suspension, a streamlined design, the typical Santa Cruz refinement, and rather radical geometry, the Tallboy is back to being a genre bending folk hero.
Sure, 10mm more travel might only seem like one small step—but coupled with a lower link-driven VPP suspension design this is one giant leap for the Tallboy.
It’s the kind of bike that makes you sprint while going up, along, over, or down due to the maximum efficiency of the VPP design and responsive, lightweight chassis. But because it shares the same engineering principles as our longest travel bikes, the progressive lower link-mounted shock feels equally at home doing cross-country as it does in extreme-country. Paired with a 130mm fork the new Tallboy becomes ever more appealing to riders who like to open it up.
And the geometry, that’s a big part of what’s going on…
Established theory suggests shorter travel bikes get ridden slower, therefore require steeper and more conservative geometries. In reality though, when was the last time you ever throttled back on a fun trail because you weren’t on a bigger bike? Caution to the wind and all that. So we’ve done the same here and mimicked our longer travel geometry to create a bike with a 65.5-degree head-angle, generous front center, and short offset fork. Something rarely seen on a bike of this ilk.
And the radical thinking doesn’t stop there. The Tallboy’s short-short 430mm chainstays have +/- 10mm of rear axle adjustment to ensure riders of all sizes and styles feel equally at home. Match that to a relatively low BB (335mm and 37.5mm drop) and you’ve got a combo that’s ready to haul into every pocket turn and launch out the other side.
Key Features:
Available in: Aluminum, Carbon C & Carbon CC
Wheel size: 29″
Front travel: 130mm
Rear travel: 120mm
Santa Cruz Hightower
If ever a bike resembled your most cherished mix tape compilation, the Hightower is it. Featuring our lower-link mounted shock design, updated, adjustable geometry, this “Engineering Best Of…” assembles some of our biggest design pleasers into one belter of a road-trip companion.
The Hightower has been a does-it-all-well trail bike since its inception. More maneuverable than its longer-travel sibling, the Megatower, and more at home in the steep-and-chunky than its snappy cousin Tallboy, Hightower excels when the route covers ‘all points in between,’ and descents come courtesy of some big-ass climbs. The VPP suspension’s lower-link-mounted shock creates a nearly linear leverage curve, meaning it mops up bumps of all sizes and maintains the kind of progressivity normally reserved for our V10 DH bike!
140mm of rear travel complemented by a 150mm front end gives Hightower just a bit more front and rear travel over the first generation model. Combined with a slacker 65-degree head tube angle, the Hightower still sits squarely in the Goldilocks zone, but with a touch more “Oh sh*t get me out of here” capability when the porridge gets too hot!
Balancing stiffness and weight savings in all the right places is a hallmark of all Santa Cruz carbon frames and the Hightower flies the flag yet higher. The advanced composite chassis tracks well across all trail surfaces, holds a line, and is reactive to rider directions while isolating pedal-influenced inputs.
The Hightower also has a bonus disc to heighten the experience—the flip chip. In the High setting, the BB height is a little higher for those tricky tech trails and/or when Plus sized tires are required. In the Low position the shock rate is more progressive, to provide additional bottom-out resistance. Whatever mood you’re in, the tone of the Hightower can be adapted to meet your individual taste.
And speaking of taste, there’s a room for a water bottle inside the main frame and a threaded BB for convenience. There’s refined cable routing for better shifting performance, simpler installation, and no cable rub. On top of that, there’s a tailgate shuttle guard, downtube protector, shock fender, and noise-canceling chainstay protector keeping things quiet.
The lifetime frame warranty, lifetime pivot bearing replacement policy, and lifetime guarantee on the optional Reserve carbon wheels assures you that the Hightower will keep delivering the hits for years to come.
Key Features:
Available in: Aluminum, Carbon C & Carbon CC
Wheel size: 29″
Front travel: 150mm
Rear travel: 140mm
Santa Cruz Bronson
Santa Cruz’s most notorious thriller, the Bronson, is ready for action no matter what role it’s cast into. The Bronson has the biggest personality in our range. From flat out on the trail to fully flat over a table, each new generation redefines expectations of what a 150mm bike can do.
The new lower-link mounted shock configuration opens up greater possibilities for maximum bump performance, a supportive mid-stroke, and a barely detectable bottom out. It’s like our most capable all-around bike just had a set of afterburners bolted on.
With 150mm of VPP travel on 27.5-inch wheels, the Bronson continually rides the sharp edge between agility and stability. Ideal for negotiating tech-gnar one moment and fast flowing terrain the next, the 160mm fork travel and 65-degree head angle ensure handling remains refined. Meanwhile, the redesigned, one-piece swingarm keeps the rear wheel tracking on point however twisted you get.
There’s plenty of room to run up to 2.8-inch tires on plus rims. We offer build kit options for “regular” 27.5 and Plus using 2.6 tires. It feels like the sorta big is the sweet spot between the Velcro-like traction of plus tires and the traditional feel of a supportive casing on standard-width tires.
Its versatility makes it the go-to choice for those seeking a skeleton key bike to unlock unfamiliar trails with ease.
Key Features:
Available in: Aluminum, Carbon C & Carbon CC
Wheel size: 27.5″ or 27.5″+
Front travel: 160mm
Rear travel: 150mm
Santa Cruz V10
At the 2017 World Cup season opener in Lourdes, Loris Vergier, Luca Shaw, and Greg Minnaar qualified 1, 3, and 6 aboard the ‘controversy machine’—a V10 with a new swingarm rolling on 29-inch wheels.
The clouds broke open before the top qualifiers, soaking the track, and the question of technological supremacy would have to wait…for five weeks, when Greg Minnaar climbed to the top step at Ft. William for the seventh time.
The arms race was on.
Over the next winter, using what we learned during the 2017 race season, we set about designing an entirely new V10—longer reach, better shock rate, and better frame and cable protection. All three frame sizes (and Reserve carbon DH wheels) were designed and manufactured in time for a week of testing before the Ft. William World Cup in 2018. Greg crashed in those sessions, breaking his arm, and effectively ending his season. A few days later, Luca qualified first and Loris third on the new bike. Loris put down a scorcher in the finals that only fellow Frenchman Amaury Pierron could top, but Luca flatted high on course and had to cruise down.
The new school had arrived, and they had new wheels.
Testing continued throughout the 2018 season, usually in the form of link sets designed to tweak the shock rate or make minor alterations in geometry. We had the big variables figured out, but fine-tuning the suspension under the Syndicate during World Cup season guaranteed regular, high-level feedback and lots of high-stakes puzzling. The result is perhaps the most refined suspension performance available outside of a World Cup pit.
That brings us to now—kind of.
Pairing 29-inch wheels with 215mm of travel makes a juggernaut of a race bike, but racing isn’t everything. Depending on the type of trails or riding style you’re into, breaking out the biggest artillery might not be ideal. Rider height also looms large when deciding which wheel size is optimal and a lot of people may opt for smaller wheels.
So we decided to make a 27.5 V10, too.
No compromises, no gimmicks, no shortcuts—it was designed in parallel to the 29er V10 as an original suspension platform and chassis. The 27.5 bike comes in Small, Medium, and Large, while the 29 comes in Medium, Large, and XL. Make your choice according to your size or riding style, and you’ll be the recipient of every bit of work and puzzling that’s gone into the Syndicate’s race bikes.
The most successful bike in downhill history shows no signs of slowing down.
More details for the realest puzzlers:
Adjustable chainstay length to optimize front/rear balance
Lower leverage rate for optimal shock performance
Internal derailleur cable routing on swingarm to protect housing from chain damage.
Key Features:
Available in: Carbon CC
Wheel size: 27.5″ or 29″
Rear travel: 215mm
Santa Cruz Stigmata
The road goes on forever and the party never ends
When the Stigmata was resurrected in 2015, we fused a number of MTB standards and design features to create our spin on the modern CX bike. Something must have clicked, because within months of launch it raced to victory at the legendary Three Peaks, and has continued to contend at elite cyclocross races around the world.
Nowadays, the internally routed disc brakes, generous tire clearance and thru-axles approach that made the Stigmata famous have become more of a norm, so we took a fresh look at which standards the riders of tomorrow wanted access to today.
Threaded bottom brackets remain a perennial favourite across our entire line thanks to their proven robust, cost-effective and compatible design. “If it ain’t broke…” …and it never is. Fender mounts add a bit of CYA, and highlight the Stigmata’s ever-widening scope of purpose. We added to that with three bottle cage mounts so that the frame can still hold at least one normal bottle even when running a front triangle bag.
Deeper adventures, bigger tires perhaps? The frame now clears up to a 45mm 700c or a 2.1” 650b tire. Marry the latter to our Force/X01 AXS mashup kit and you’ve got yourself the kind of drop-bar singletrack rallycat we can all get onboard with.
And when it comes to good old-fashioned off-road etiquette, the Stigmata’s had some coaching at the Highball school of stiffness, handling, and offroad feel. The carbon layup borrows knowledge gained from not just the Highball, but also Danny MacAskill’s trials bike, to produce a ride so law-abiding you’d think HR had sent it on a compliance training course.
Geometry plays a big part here too, so we’ve made tweaks to improve handling for smaller riders and reduce toe overlap. The reworking of the 52/54cm frames means the Stigmata now comfortably suits riders from 5’3” and up. Meanwhile different fork offsets—50mm for the 52-54cm sizes, and 45mm for the 56-61cm sizes—help ensure your little piggies don’t go to market on the front wheel.
Topped off with tidy details like 12mm front axle, flat mount brakes and build-specific Reserve wheel packages, the Stigmata is designed to let you decide whatever the heck you want this category to be.
Key Features:
Available in: Carbon CC
Wheel size: 650b or 700c
Rear travel: Gravel/CX
Santa Cruz Heckler
In 1996 the Heckler was created as a rude interruption to mountain bike designs of the time. Its solid, full suspension build and aggressive swagger proved that a well-proportioned trail bike could elevate rider’s on-trail experiences. Today’s Heckler carries all that attitude forward into a new era.
A full carbon frame, VPP suspension and pedal-assist technology have merged to create something light and agile that amplifies the fun.
Like all Santa Cruz bikes, the Heckler pedals well regardless of watts involved. The lower link VPP approach is tweaked to deliver slightly lower anti-squat versus a Bronson. This adds a touch more support and traction over rough stuff when pedalling seated – a major advantage of having a Shimano motor on your side.
And like every Santa Cruz bike, the Heckler is built for the rigors of true mountain biking. Shimano electronics were chosen for their refinement and reliability, while quality pivot hardware, easily replaceable radial bearings and no-nonsense internal cabling were considered with a mechanics sanity in mind!
Creating an e-MTB demanded careful consideration. For us, the Heckler’s potential to loft riders up to new heights is what gets us most excited. Trailblazers like Greg Williams and Danny MacAskill weren’t asking for a dumbed-down ride up. Or down. They wanted something to push their riding to new levels. And held maneuverability sacrosanct as the new tech was introduced.
The Heckler’s boundaries aren’t defined by distance, laps, or time. The boundaries in our head that say, “Don’t bother”, “Turn back”, “Impossible.” Smashing these boundaries is what got us hooked on riding in the first place. Heckler’s not about taking things easy, it’s about making things possible.
Key Features:
Available in: Carbon CC
Wheel size: 27.5″
Front travel: 160mm
Rear travel: 150mm
Drive Unit: Shimano DU-E8000
Battery capacity: 504wh
