It had 120mm of travel, which was, in my opinion, super unacceptable. I was like, “What the fuck, dude, what did you do?” It was that different from anything I had ridden. I think it was after the third run, and I called Dave from the parking lot.
WHAT YOU GET Fox Float 36 fork, SRAM X01 Eagle drivetrain, SRAM Guide RSC brakes, Maxxis Minion 2.3 tires, and Stans Arch MK3 Pro wheels with 26mm internal width. 450mm reach and 1184mm wheelbase (size M).76.3-degree (effective) seat-tube angle.I started ripping corners, and I’m like, “There’s no end to the grip on this.” I’m like, “Holy shit, we are hauling ass.” I had ridden the Specialized, I had ridden the Santa Cruz, but at the time those bikes were more cross-country oriented. I remember ripping up all these off-camber wet roots. The first run, I’m like, “Whoa! This is really surprising!” I remember climbing on it: “Wow, this thing boogies up the hill pretty good.”, the traction was nuts. We have a couple local trails, Tokul and Tiger Mountain, typical Northwest rutty, rocky trails. I got that thing and my level of excitement for this bike was as low as it could be. I was like, ‘What the f*#% did you do?’”īicycling: Kevin, when did The Following win you over? Like many, Walsh bought into what he now calls “the 29er stigma,” or the idea that big wheels couldn’t corner well, weren’t lively, and thus couldn’t really get rowdy.ĭave: I looked at Evil and I was like, “This company needs an absolute home run. I really believe we should do this short-travel 29er and blow everybody’s mind.” I’m like, “Are you crazy?” (3) And Dave just said, “Trust me, this will be the best bike we’ve designed.”ģ / Walsh has a BMX and downhill background, and around this time, World Cup downhill was dominated by 26-inch-wheels. I said, “Dave, we need to make a 27.5 bike.” Dave was like, “Kev, I disagree. They said, let’s develop what became The Following, together.Īt that time, 27.5 had taken over. Honestly, at that point, Dave and I had the conversation, like, is this done? But a friend of ours had a good relationship with one of the top carbon producers in the industry. So we partnered with another factory, and we had a similar thing happen again. The brand was on its knees.īut the bikes had been reviewed very well, people liked what the brand was about. At that point, the company was reduced to myself and Dave’s consulting. I had no way to get people refunds or anything. We were stuck with a sizable amount of warranties, and the factory wouldn’t support them. When we got into mass production, we started seeing major defects. We moved from American production to Taiwan manufacturing. Evil took off more quickly than we had anticipated or, frankly, wanted. Kevin: We had all this information from Iron Horse and team. The suspension design Evil used was called DELTA, which is an acronym for Dave’s Extra Legitimate Travel Apparatus. 2 / Weagle is a suspension and design consultant, and has worked with brands including Evil, Ibis, Pivot, Salsa, Devinci, and Turner. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2009, but part of the Evil mystique borrows from the Iron Horse legacy. (2) Kevin reached out and said, ‘Hey, you want to sell Evil ?’ġ / Iron Horse was at one point a mountain bike brand with a budget reputation, but after Weagle and Walsh were hired on in 2006 to turn things around, it sponsored some of the best World Cup downhillers, including Sam Hill and Dave Cullinan. (1) They went through…what would you call it, Dave?ĭave: The management embezzled a bunch of money, and I left. Kevin: Dave and I had met through Iron Horse. “The brand was on its knees.”īicycling: Where did The Following come from? And one thing is inarguable: This bike saved Evil.īicycling sat down with Kevin Walsh and Dave Weagle and asked them to give us the gritty details of how their now-thriving company almost died, how The Following resurrected it, and what makes this bike ride like nothing else. Still, today, almost every manufacturer has a trail bike that marries the playful, efficient feel of shorter travel with more aggressive geometry and parts. It’s impossible to quantify The Following’s total influence-mountain bikes were headed toward long-low-slack anyway. It dispelled the idea that they were slow to accelerate and hard to muscle around corners. And they were becoming 29er converts: Just when it seemed like 27.5 was going to win the wheel size war, The Following made 29ers cool. But they were also just having fun ripping around their everyday trails. On this short-travel bike, people were riding DH, they were hucking. Let’s Argue About the Greatest Bikes Ever Made!Īs people started riding The Following, buzz built.