SANTA CRUZ NOMAD CC X01 RSV
£7,799 / 27.5in / santacruzbicycles.com
The Santa Cruz Nomad needs no introduction, so apologies for being really annoying and giving one anyway. Launched in 2005 with a hunchback, hydroformed alloy frame, it originally came under the all-mountain banner. In 2010 the first carbon Nomad was introduced, followed in 2014 by the third iteration with much more modern geometry and – shock, horror – 27.5in wheels. By that point, the Nomad had become the desktop wallpaper bike for a generation in the same way that the Ferrari F40 was the poster car of the late Eighties. It sold like hot cakes, and and pedalled so well you could actually justify being totally over-biked.
Finally, three years ago the Nomad 4 was released, and with it a wholesale change of chassis design and suspension kinematics that, after several small, incremental steps, represented a genuine leap in performance. That lower link-driven shock, first used on the V10, got rid of the
