Commencal Ramones 1 Review - BikeRadar

Commencal turned their superb gravity bike reputation into trail gold with the Meta series and now they've stepped into the hardcore hardtail fray with the new Ramones twins.

Massive strength makes them perfect Teenage Lobotomy material, but while the Ramones 1 is a super-tough, sweet-handling hardcore machine, its stiffness and high weight limit it to downhill and play use only.

Ride & handling: Armageddon-proof accuracy that'll embarrass full-sussers, but a beast to climb on

At over 32lb (14.5kg) once you’ve got pedals on, the Ramones is as heavy as some 6in-travel full-suspension bikes. While the fast-rolling rear tyre does its best, there’s no escaping that it’s an absolute beast to climb on and it’s slow on the uptake out of corners too.

Once you’ve got it up to speed (or the top of the hill) though, the Andorran mountain breeding of the Ramones is clear. The bar is a little narrow, but the slack head angle and short stem put fast reaction control right in the palm of your hands.

While it needs a lot of muscle to move it around at slow speeds, the excellent handling balance means every extra mile per hour makes it a lot more manageable.

Having a rear tyre that slips and slides to double the steering effect is a trick experienced extreme riders will already know. Add a really short back end and a relatively steep seat angle to keep you over the front and, as soon as you twist the grips to counter steer and drop your shoulder into a turn, the Ramones responds with a totally nailed nose and flaring rear.

Perfect for playing down the woods or making progressive lines look and feel even more radical. Keeping the weight forward and encouraging you out of the saddle also offsets the frame’s jackhammer stiffness and lets you appreciate the surefooted feel of the coil-sprung screw-through-axle fork.

Frame: Massive strength and stiffness, but too weighty to head into the hills on

The Ramones’ short head tube gets thick reinforcing rings at the top and bottom, and there’s a short gusset on the top tube and a long curved gusset plate underneath the curved headed and seriously oversized graffiti decal down tube.

There’s another big hammerhead wraparound piece bridging the top tube and extended seatstay. The seatstays extend 8cm along the top tube/seat tube junction for maximum overlapping strength.

Thick rectangular stays triangulate onto thick plate terminals with chainring bolts fixing the replaceable dropout pieces in place. In short, this is a frame that means business. Relatively limited mud space and no bottle cages point to a short range/long drop intent that’s confirmed the moment you start riding.

Equipment: Heavy fork, and while rest of kit works fine, it's not great value

The Ramones 1's RockShox Recon 327 fork is a rung below the forks found on other similar hardcore hardtails. It’s stiff and strong but very heavy. The coil spring is smooth but less sophisticated damping gives an occasionally clunky feel. While the rest of the gear is okay, it’s not outstanding for the price.

Sharp-eyed spec checkers will have noticed the Truvativ double-and-bashguard chainset on our sample is the model from the cheaper Ramones 2 bike. What should be on here is a Race Face Ride double and bashguard for a bit of Canadian class.

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