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The Colorado Soft Tail was an interesting thing. I’d built my own full Ti suspension bike as an after work project and it really turned me on to how much suspension could help. At the time full suspension bikes were’t used for racing as they were looked at as too heavy and bouncy so the idea of a limited travel race bike was stuck in my head.
I had a rough idea of how I wanted to do it and I went to Ben Serotta and just causally floated the idea to see what he thought. He was not excited by the idea but he didn’t say “no” and in my youthful mind that left the door open. I did a bunch of design work on the bits and pieces needed to make it happen and when Ben left for a dealer tour I rushed and built two of what would become the CST….one for me and one for a gifted racer and fellow employee named Greg.
We had fully finished and production ready prototypes done and being tested by the time Ben got back and I rolled one into his office and held my breath in anticipation of an angry boss. But Ben was very cool about it. When I showed him how few special parts were needed to build the frames (nearly everything was off the shelf) he liked the idea. Further testing resulted in some very minor changes but the overall concept held. The bike was designed under cover in about 2 days and we had bikes on the ground in less than a week.
I really liked the ride but feel that they would have benefited from a custom shock to deal with the travel ratio. It would have given a better ride with more adjustability to suit the rider (it was not great for super light riders as the shock couldn’t be made soft enough given that chainstays were effectively springs too). I guess they offered them for some time after I left in 1999. It was a bit of a unicorn but I liked them.
dave
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