[April Fools, Kinda] Pivot Cycles to Produce the Grim Donut V2
SQUAMISH, BC / PHOENIX, AZ
Pivot Cycles and Pinkbike announce 2021 partnership.
The award winning manufacturer has committed to producing and racing the Grim Donut.
Last year, the mountain bike world was turned on its head when Pinkbike produced a “bike from the future” called the Grim Donut [Part 1 & Part 2]. A tongue-in-cheek lampooning of the industry’s incremental advancements, the Grim Donut used geometry from the past 10 years of bike development to extrapolate what the future could look like.
A joke taken too far, everyone was surprised that the bike was actually rideable, let alone fast. But after being piloted by Yoann Barelli to some very fast test laps, it turns out that there might be something to that assumption of linear progress.
We're excited to announce that Pivot will be producing V2 of the Grim Donut. Details on the bike are still scarce, but we can release the following information:
• For the first time in the history of the bicycle industry, a new bike will be steeper than the one that preceded it. We're calling it Steeper Head Angle Technology™. The first Donut was supposed to have a 57° headtube angle, but because Pinkbike is bad at math it ended up just shy of 56°. After some testing with anglesets, the new bike is set to have a 58° headtube angle. So conservative.
• It will be handcrafted with a premium blend of culinary grade, ultra-exclusive Al13™ alloy, with tube shapes perfectly optimized for aero tucks. Using advanced manufacturing processes ensures delivery of an imperceptible 0.69% increase in stiffness-to-weight and ride quality.
• The bike is no longer limited by needing to weld two toptubes together. That means that, for the first time ever, the Grim Donut will be produced as a size Medium (525mm reach).
• Designed around pre-de-tensioned wheels so you can finally turn left just as well as right. Vertically rigid yet laterally compliant.
• We don’t know what suspension design we’re going to use yet, but rest assured it will keep all pedaling forces, brake forces, rough terrain impacts, gear ratios, and your parents entirely separate from each other. There will be no compromises.
• All of the new bike’s technologies will be upgraded from Three Letter Acronyms (TLA™) to Four Letter Acronyms.
Tom Bradshaw putting in some test laps on the original Donut. Are reverse offset forks the future?
 | The first Grim Donut was built by Genio, one of Pivot’s frame suppliers in Taiwan. Throughout that process, [Pivot CEO] Chris Cocalis was super helpful and open about their process, so it was a natural progression to have them do V2 directly in their Phoenix, AZ facility. |
Pivot has also committed to bringing the Grim Donut V2’s leapfrog approach to the race circuit, using their EWS race team to test and validate the bike’s blistering speed. Ed Masters, Matt Walker, Bernard Kerr, Morgane Charre, and Emilie Siegenthaler will all take the start-line on the new bike throughout the year.
| I’m excited to see where this crazy progressive leap in technology will take us. I’ve never had a drink bottle holder on my Enduro bike before but now I have 3! These new unlocked levels of hydration will no doubt boost the team's performances throughout the year. |
| Genuinely excited about putting my own sprinkles on the Donut V2. For some reason all I want to do is see how big of a flat drop it can handle. Stay tuned! |
The original High Pivot Virtual™ suspension design had all the things: dual-links, an idler pulley, and a pivot higher than Snoop in the mid-90s. Plus room for three bottles, a feature that's being revisited in V2. Drawing by Waki Designs.
| At Pivot we’ve always emphasized steady, sensible product development. But after seeing the Grim Donut V1, we’re curious to see where a leap forward could take us. Our understanding of suspension kinematics and ability to produce high quality frames in-house will take this project to the next level. |
There will be a very limited number of production Grim Donut bikes made available for the public to purchase. Stay tuned for more information on that launch later in 2021.
| Climbs like a homemade eMTB and descends like a 2005 VP-Free. |
The outlook for the competition is grim.
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Makes the Pinkbike comment section a little bit less boring so this better not be a April Fools Joke or I’ll never downvote you again!
@tacklingdummy - I created a fake account only once. It was a social experiment. I was spewing completely untrue stuff but I was attacking my main account saying Waki is a fraud. I got many upvotes. Sorry I had another one Wcartman or something. Again... I was purposefully talking bollocks... many upvotes
Long bikes are here only because they got lobbied by unusually tall people like Paul Aston who worked for Geometron, Chris Porter or Jens Staudt who worked with Pivot on geometries. We all pay price for tall people pushing their agenda. Big cassettes are just wrong, carbon bars suck for arm pump, what you need is an Eleiko bar, 100+kg of weights and romanian deadlifts.
I am here to push for 32" wheels. but maybe just for April fools... oh the dopamine!!!
Predictions:
Not a Pivot, but Pivot helps with the design and maybe manufacturing.
Announced by the end of summer.
Addition of extremely adjustable geometry.
The world already moved on to Extended Three Letter Acronyms (ETLA™)
But really, TLA ADL FTW LOL
All Day Long
Niceeeeeeee !
Cheers, Lars
Don’t believe me? Check out my other posts on various April Fools articles about “the industry...”
So true xD