The last half a decade must have been a complete blur for Atherton bikes. What other brand can say that in the first five years of existing it has secured a World Championship win, five World Cup wins, and released five completely new bikes.
What started with the prototype AM.200 downhill bike in 2019 have very quickly developed into a full range of bikes, bucking the current turmoil trend in the industry at the moment.
The small Welsh-based brand led by Dan Brown doesn't appear to be slowing down either. Atherton Bikes continues to grow as it looks to put the finishing touches to a new facility that will allow the company to build and scale in line with its ambitions.
New prototype Atherton enduro bike
Part of that upscaling appears to be a new enduro bike, which was teased as part of Atherton Bikes' five-year recap.
The picture shows Dan Atherton riding Dyfi bike park aboard an all silver bike, tantalizingly captioned “Coming soon: The team are working hard on a new Aluminium product for release early this year.”
Atherton Bikes is certainly keeping its cards close to its chest with the photo, although we can probably make a few educated guesses as to what we can expect.
First, it's probably safe to say that the alloy construction and its Fox 38 Factory fork and Fox DHX2 coil rear shock means this could be a more affordable version of the Enduro.170. While we can't see much of the suspension setup, it's probably safe to assume it will have the same Dave Weagle DW6 linkage that is used across Atherton's other bikes.
What will be most interesting will be the methods of production considering Atherton Bikes in-house ethos and its new manufacturing facility. The current bikes use carbon tubes and titanium 3D printed lugs which not only simplifies the production process but also allow flexibility for custom geometry. The question here is have the Atherton engineers developed something similar in aluminum? The angle of the photo gives away very few frame details, however, the head badge design appears to be part of the tube, indicating there could be some CNC magic happening.
Without knowing much about the frames manufacturing, it's hard to make an educated guess at pricing either. The current AM.170 frameset costs £4,500, so I would hazard a guess an alloy Atherton Enduro.170 could retail for as little as £2,000 as it will be competing directly with the likes of Privateer and Raaw.
Until Atherton Bikes provides us with more details, we wait with bated breath. In the meantime, you can check out Atherton Bikes greatest hits of the last five years at Athertonbikes.com.
