Updated
Nick from Italy sent me this link http://www.free-bike.net/photo/offroad/riding/ of our distributor Freebike and Francesco [owner] taking his Wildcard out for a rip. I'll be getting review from him soon but from the looks of it, he seems pretty comfortable on this bike. http://www.free-bike.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=57
Update: 12/5/07
So you’ve seen my video and you can guess I’m not one hell of a rider….but it’s 9 year now I’m doing freeride so I can pretty say I know something about bikes and how a bikes must ride. My last Banshee was a Chaparral 2007 with fox dhx coil and fox 36 front.
Well the wildcard is a completely different bike. Where to start: weight my wildcard is 16,5 kg ( 36,4 lbs) just as it is: lyric coil, mavic dee max tubeless with maxxis minion dh 2,5’’ tyres, dhx 5.0 coil built up with sram x.5, truvativ huss cranks, avid code 5 brakes. Is a 15’’. I’m 6,1’’ tall and feel it perfect for me. The new wildcard is 2 kg less than my old chaparral, it has a lower front end longer wheelbase and lower bottom bracket keeping everything together it has more room to shift my body position from handlebar to the saddle.
On the ride side all those different characteristics give the bike a really different handling: the bike is easier to put in the air ( the main example is that on the first jump you see in the video, 30 foot long, I can roll in to the kick slower than my previous bike, I still use 32x13 shift but I erase 2 pedals before the kick!!!), has a stability on fast section that is unusual to every past Banshee model, rails on corner (you’ve seen on video lots of berm) with such a precision and shape that really impressed me. Overall this bike is fast, really fast, on tight corner, berms it really flows from a jump to another. And yes!.. it’s my pourpose to use it as an allround freeride bike, not just as a slopestyle bike, and believe me it’s perfect for this mission.
The rear suspension is quite different from previous banshee faux bar: I feel it softer on small bumps but without suffering of any harsh bottom out on hard landings. Keith has done a great work perfecting the ‘’old’’ banshee suspension system. And, at the end, the quality of welding, paint has really grown up.
Pretty proud of this bike also because, and you haven’t seen on the video, at the end of the day I was forced to pedal up the hill for 20 minutes to bring back my car and the wildcard just climb better than my legs!!!
22PRIDE
