2018 Lapierre Spicy 527 – a quick look

The Lapierre Spicy 527 just landed at Wideopenmag for a razzing round South Wales with our man Lewis.

Time for a quick guided tour of the Dijon Destroyer!

The Lapierre Spicy 527 landed a couple of weeks back for review and has already seen its fair share of action.

Our new test-pilot Lewis Bradley will be taking this one on long term and taking the bike to the Megavalanche, round the Welsh Gravity Enduro Series, on his big alpine road trip and tonnes of local South Wales rides in between.

Built with Nico

So what do you need to know about the 2018 Lapierre Spicy 527?

It’s been designed with the help of Nico Vouilloz for one.

Nico, is of course one of the most successful mountain bike racers of all time has 16 World Cup DH wins and 10 DH World Champs titles to his name.

We’re not saying that guarantees a great bike but he’s not a bad Frenchman to have behind your bicycle, oui?

The basics

The Spicy 527 is Lapierre’s ‘middle of the three’ enduro bike. It’ll cost you £3900 and comes with a blend of very respectable components that will work will without being big-budget posh.

£5299 gets you the Spicy Ultimate or you can get the alloy Spicy 327 for £2799.

Lewis’ Spicy 527 has 165mm travel out back, 27.5″ wheels and comes with a coil RS Super Deluxe shock which we’re pretty excited about.  There’s a carbon frame with carbon linkage, boost spacing on the back and metric shock.

The spec is solid and sensible. There’s a RS Yari out front and a Super Deluxe on the rear. Mavic, Formula and Michelin team up on the wheels and a mish-mash of SRAM GX, XO1, Race Face and Shimano make up the rest of the components.

All in all, it’s a very decent package.

OST+ Suspension and a VPP

Lapierre’s suspension uses what they call OST+ technology.

The OST+ system aims to reduce pedal bob so that you can pedal up bloody great big hills and still descend as you’d like to on a bike with a 165mm of travel and a coil shock.

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Lapierre explain that pedal bob is counter acted by pedalling. As you pedal, the tension from the chain will pull the swing arm back into line. “If the rear shock is properly adjusted to the weight of the rider” they say “the efficiency and performance are optimal”.

No comment on performance as yet though – we’ll need to get a few more rides down to make any judgements.

The Geometry

The bike is sensibly sized and shaped without getting into super modern long-and-slack territory.

There’s a not-t00-slack but not-too-steep 66° head angle, 435mm stays, a roomy 461mm reach on a size large and a 75° seat angle which is, like most of the Lapierre’s numbers, pretty spot on.

The Spicy 527 has been build, according to Lapierre, for “riding fast on rough, steep terrain. Pedalling back up to hit another descent. Technical singletracks, wide bermed turns, rocks, roots, mud, dust”.

That basically means everything Nico can chuck at it, everything Lapierre’s pro riders face on the Enduro World Series and whatever you or I decide to hurl it down.

Lewis says:

I was pretty sceptical when I first got the bike as I’ve not ridden a coil shock on an enduro bike… and I was a bit worried it might not quite be slack or long enough just from looking at the numbers on paper.

I was really happy to find that the bike pedals amazingly and climbs well, the geometry works well to balance your body position and the seat angle just seems to put you in the right place.

When descending it handles superbly and on the steep stuff in South Wales it really sticks to the terrain. 170mm of travel and the geometry work really well together.

It’s not afraid of big jumps and or the gnarly Bikepark trails either. It gains speed really nicely when you pump out of turns and picks up speed easily. It’s definitely a bike that feels easy to go fast on.

So far I’ve made some minor changes. The bars didn’t feel great for my style so I put some Renthals on. A lock out on the fork would be nice too!

You can read more about the 2018 Lapierre Spicy 527 here on the Lapierre website.

You can find your local UK Lapierre dealer here on Raleigh’s website.


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