COTIC ROCKETMAX

FRAME AND CANE CREEK DB AIR SHOCK | £2,049 ($2,678)

- JONATHON WEBER

I tend to assume that anyone making a steel full-suspension bike must hold a dogmatic belief in ferrous metals. Don’t get me wrong: dogmatic beliefs can be correct, but the tiny proportion of the mountain bike market dedicated to steel full-suspension bikes would indicate that carbon and aluminum have a lot going for them. So why build with steel?

Cotic started in 2002 when Cy Turner, then a railway engineer, designed a progressive steel hardtail for his own use. What was originally intended to be a one-off, custom frame by a local builder turned into a run of 100 Taiwan-made Soul hardtail frames, the first to bear the Cotic headbadge. That initial batch was ordered in matte grey (number 817), but those digits got scrambled somewhere along the line, and the frames showed up at Turner’s door in a scalding shade of hot pink (number 718, to be precise).

It was a fittingly absurd start for a brand known for cheeky videos like “26 Ain’t Dead,” and for helping launch the careers of 50to01 jibbers Craig Evans and Josh Lewis, as well as Steel City Media, which produced “Gamble” and a slew of other moving pictures, mostly documenting the antics and railing of ruts by Britain’s fastest and loosest.