Vitus Escarpe 2 Review (Mini - First Look)

First Look - Vitus Escarpe 2 Review

Wow... At £1295 (Now ONLY £879) you would be forgiven for thinking this bike was a Halfords toy special or one of those imitation suspension bikes with the undamped shocks and box iron tubing.

Be assured this blue machine is the real deal. At its reduced price of £879 the Vitus Escarpe Gravity Enduro bike has to be the cheapest serious full suspension all mountain bike on the market and you would be lucky to get a similarly specced hardtail at this price.

 The Vitus Escarpe 2 is equipped with a Rock Shox Monarch rear shock and Rock Shoxs new mid range budget forks the air sprung Sektor's. 140mm Front and back the Vitus Escarpe 2 is marketed as an all mountain / long travel enduro bike. A speed machine ready for all day alpine routes, handling itself admirably both on the ups and thrashing the downs. At under 14kg its pretty light for a full suspension steed.
Vitus are not a big name brand, so I had initial worries that this was not a long term bike and maybe even a bit of a gimmick. It was reassuring to learn Vitus are the in house brand for Chain Reaction and the bikes have been properly designed and developed by the bloke responsable for the Nukeproof, Ragley and On One brands.

There are not many Vitus Escarpe 2 reviews available on the internet. We at DirtMTB have one on order which is due to land any day now. So we will be posting our first impressions review asap and a long term review after a few months of riding her.
In the mean time the reviews we can find seem to be very favorable. Mbr and BikeMagic have both done short reviews and first looks on the Escarpe 1 (the higher priced model). They were impressed with the overall package and both gave it 4 out of 5 stars.
The customer reviews on CRC seem favorable, mentioning how well the Escarpe 2 descends and how well the suspension eases into its stride. They also mention small problems with the brakes overheating, lack of power and bleeding issues (something we will have a closer look at when the test bike arrives).
If this is a problem with the Avids then it would be interesting to look at what replacements could be upgraded to. I personally think slightly dodgy brakes doesn't distract from an overal fantastic bargain of a bike. The reviews on CRC seem to agree with me. Read the customer reviews here...

To be honest at under £900 I cant find any similarly priced serious full suspension bikes available.
I suppose you would have to look to the second hand market to pick up something similar at this price.
If your in the market for a new longer travel enduro style bike for under £1000 then the Vitus Escarpe 2 surely has to be the one. As with all things good though the reduced price Escarpe 2 cant last for ever so try to be quick! CRC say these bikes are selling fast and they do have limited stock.
Our more comprehensive review of the Escarpe 2 will be coming sometime in the next few weeks, if you can't wait that long then i'm sure your £870 will be well spent!

Check the best price for the Escarpe 2 and other Vitus Models here...


Dirt Mtb