Steve Shand’s range of bikes may have expanded, but he’s never strayed very far from his core value of wherever-you-want-to-roam bikes majoring on versatility.
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That’s clear as soon as you do a quick scan over the £1,495 Stooshie frame. Interchangeable ‘Polydrop’ dropout pieces that bolt into frame terminals let you choose between a quick release or 142x12mm rear thru-axle. There are Rohloff and Gates Belt Drive options and the dropouts can be changed between different brake mount standards. The PF30 bottom bracket shell can be used with an eccentric insert for a standard bottom bracket if you need to take up chain slack or to make micro-adjustments of the effective seat-tube angle or bottom bracket height.
And it’s not just the back end that’s so well detailed. The frame itself is made from a carefully selected, Romeo and Juliet-style mixed marriage of material from Columbus and Dedacciai. The bolt-on front mech cable stop is particularly pretty and the fully external, bolted-clip cable routing is neatly hidden on the lower, inner face of the chainstay.
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Mudguard, rack and three bottle mounts come as standard. And if five stock sizes doesn’t work for you, custom sizing is available from £150. Portland Design Works mudguards cost £75 and there’s a range of frame colours, with the TRP carbon fork and stem painted to match.
As well as separating it aesthetically from mainstream machines, that colour-coded front end also had a significant effect on the handling. While there’s little unusual in the geometry — apart from the fact our sample had the head-tube length of a small but the seat-tube length of a medium — the combined effect gives the bike great stability. Add a longish stem that gives a stubborn straight-on persona, and you’ve got a bike that takes a wide, swinging arc around corners rather than one where you constantly need to tweak its trajectory. That all serves to make it a very relaxing ride on open trails. The flipside is that getting up out of the saddle reveals a lazy, lurching trait that’s less desirable. The seat angle is also relaxed for a feel that is more cruiser than combative.
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