Unveiled – The new 2015 Specialized Demo

The rumour mills had been grinding for some time about a new Specialized Demo, but now the new bike has finally been unveiled before its first official race appearance in Mont Sainte Anne this weekend. The video below is probably a good place to start finding out what this new bike is all about…

So yeah it’s the usual claims of lighter, stiffer, faster etc, and it’s got 27.5″ wheels, but there are a few other things that are of particular interest. Perhaps the biggest move is the change in suspension layout. The previous Demo design has been around for donkeys years now, but this bike seems to take a move back towards a more traditional Specialized 4-bar layout. I say seems to because there is one crucial difference between this bike and any Specialized bike that has come before it, and that is that the chainstay now pivots around the bottom bracket. There’s no word yet as to exactly why this change has been brought about, but I’d love to know the answer. There must be good reason because after so many years of making 4-bars in the way that they have done it would seem crazy to break such tradition without good reason. This is definitely the biggest suspension departure yet from Specialized.

As you can see from the photo above the biggest visual change comes in the shape of the single sided seat tube arrangement. By making the frame this way Specialized reckon they’ve been able to make the frame lighter and stiffer, plus it has the added bonus that it is super easy to change the shock for tuning and servicing purposes.

So, for now I’m afraid that’s all the info you’re going to get, but stay tuned for more details. In the mean time though it’s going to be interesting to see how Gwin and Troy get on with this bike come race time this weekend…

If you want to compare Gwin on his old bike compared to this new one then you can watch a previous video of him here, and to compare the bikes you can see the old version here.