Sea Otter: Banshee Prime (and Spitfire)

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You may not immediately recognise the Banshee name. That’s because (due to Halfords owning the name ‘Banshee’) they go by ‘Mythic’ in the UK. Nevertheless, they’re a pretty British-friendly company. The marketing guy is English and the designer is Scottish and lives in Edinburgh. We covered this briefly in our 29er roundup but reckon it’s worth a more in-depth look.

Anyway, Banshee was proudly showing off its new 29er bike, the Prime, and reminded us about its ‘ideal for the UK’ 26in bike, the Spitfire.
Prototype Banshee Prime in 'proto-raw' finish

The Banshee Prime is a 5in/130mm true all-mountain 29er. Featuring full bearings on all the pivots, a 150×12 or 135QR back end and a 67.5° head angle (that they reckon is a 66.5° 26in equivalent) the bike is designed to go everywhere the small wheelers go.

 

Big head tube for any fork combo

The bike will come in M, L and XL sizes and will be out Spring 2012 (once its 74 test riders have finished evaluating it.)

The bike also had some prototype 29er things on it, like this first prototype Manitou Tower fork – 140mm.

Those logos look printed out and stuck on, that's how prototype they are.

 

Non drive side, showing the chunky back and and linkages.

 

...and these Geax Sturdy 29 x 2.3in tyres

 

Some nice machining going on there.

 

Changeable dropouts for 135 or 150mm hubs

 

 

Direct mount front mech for more all-mountain use, or a direct mount chain guide for more extreme stuff.

And here’s the Spitfire. It’s a 66-67°/74° mismatched travel bike designed for 160mm fork up front and 127mm out back. It’s already got some of the Calderdale riders salivating.

Chipps Chippendale

Singletrackworld's Editor At Large

With 22 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps is the longest-running mountain bike magazine editor in the world. He started in the bike trade in 1990 and became a full time mountain bike journalist at the start of 1994. Over the last 30 years as a bike writer and photographer, he has seen mountain bike culture flourish, strengthen and diversify and bike technology go from rigid steel frames to fully suspended carbon fibre (and sometimes back to rigid steel as well.)

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Comments (2)

    ShackletonShackleton April 21, 2011 at 11:55 am

    Seems every UK mountain bike website says “The Spitfire could be the ideal UK bike”, they are sold for a good price (Freeborn/Mythic), they match the current vogue for mismatched travel, look great and the designer lives in Edinburgh yet somehow I have yet to see a test of one in the UK.

    Any chance of remedying the situation? I like the look, I like the idea, but have yet to hear any real world assessments of one in the UK.

    markenduromarkenduro April 21, 2011 at 1:58 pm

    That prime could almost tempt me to go back to a full susser

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