Yes, Santa Cruz bikes are some of the best around. They’re more expensive than what most of the competition has to offer, but the price is well-justified. Santa Cruz builds bikes using premium aluminum and carbon materials coupled with reliable Shimano and SRAM components.

Santa Cruz will always be best known for its full suspension bikes, but they play in the hardtail space, too. The Chameleon can be run with 29- or 27.5+ wheels and tires, has a progressive 67.3-degree headtube angle, and has internal routing for a dropper post if you want to up its rowdy factor.

Frame fabrication occurs in China and Taiwan, but all bicycles are assembled in Santa Cruz, built to customer specifications just before being shipped out. In 2013, a single model, the “Juliana” was spun off as a stand-alone brand and range of mountain bikes for women, designed by and named for Juli Furtado.

JOSH KISSNER: Like the Blur TRc, the 5010 is a 125-millimeter bike that is designed to be ridden hard. We really designed this bike for our home trails in Santa Cruz, which are fast- sometimes steep, and a bit too smooth to really take advantage of a long travel bike.

By equipping this 5010 with a 130-mil RockShox Pike RC Solo Air fork and a 125-mil Fox Float CTD Evolution shock, Santa Cruz kept the bike light and snappy in the front end, and the 68-degree head angle struck a fair compromise between climbing and descending.

SANTA CRUZ 5010 CARBON S | $4700 | SANTACRUZBICYCLES.COM It’s not every day that our test crew rides a bike that sparks an impassioned debate over the vagaries of punk rock in an increasingly corporate world. But that’s exactly what happened after we took the 5010 Carbon S on some hot laps around our drop-filled test loop.