In 2012, I think Salsa should shock the market with a high-end, full Carbon road race offering. Salsa showed it can design great road race bicycles when it did the Campeón and, later, the Podio.

Problem is the market is buying less and less Alu road race bicycles, and even less Scandium road race bicycles, and instead buying more and more Carbon roar race bicycles. The same is beginning to happen even for performance or sportive bicycles. This trend will continue into the future, at an even faster pace. The trend will not reverse.

If Salsa were to launch a complete, high-end full Carbon road race bicycles with full SRAM Force group, it would give a major migraine to some of the brands that deal with independent lbs’s and that are offering ever nicer carbon road race bicycles, such and Jamis and Fuji. And even mightier, respected competitors in the production Carbon market, such as Cérvelo and Look, would get a small headache. It is well known that Salsa was inspired by Cérvelo’s RS frame when designing the Podio, and Salsa is right to draw inspiration from suchs giants and aspire to match some of their prowess while doing so at a more attractive pricepoint.

As for mountain bikes, I believe Salsa should also offer a 26″ (wrong blog, I know) full carbon race offering to replace the departed Moto Rapido. That U.K.-based On-One Bicycles, a brand that is very similar to Salsa in many ways (and that began offering Lynskey-sourced Ti mtb frames before Salsa did) is embracing Carbon this year says something.

One well-designed, high quality, relatively affordable (e.g. just shy of $2K for frameset only, and just shy of $3K with SRAM Force) full Carbon road race and mtb race model is all Salsa needs. This is a market sweetspot that only a few respected brands, such as Look, are currently exploting, so there’s a big opportunity for Salsa here.

Salsa will always have many more offerings in their Steel, Scandium and now Ti range, which are the core of its catalog.

Like mentioned in another post, the Salsa Dos Niner is getting a little tired. I would love to see a dos niner designed to remove the rear triangle at a reasonable price point (the other options are 2K+). Scandium would be good, Ti would even be better….

The reason the dos niner was a hit was because no one else was making one, Be the first to build an affordable travel softail frame.

Salsa–do something new/different/better to stand out.

Thanks!

Also, is that an FSA Afterburner 386 crankset in the second pic? If so, interesting choice…