Marin have revealed they are scrapping their new Alchemist trail bike due to a "durability issue". They say fixing the problem would make the bike too heavy, so they've gone back to the drawing board.
When he reviewed it last month, BikeRadar's Guy Kesteven described the £4,000 Alchemist 4.9 as tough and trail-ready but too heavy for its class. The 100mm-travel frame weighed 6.74lb (3.05kg).
Marin's marketing manager Mark Vanek told BikeRadar that he had been informed the bike's production was to be "terminated".
He said: "Our product development [team] has announced that during the process of developing the latest iteration of the Alchemist frame design a durability issue was discovered. After discussions and further research on a solution, [it appears that] it would require the addition of extra material to meet our durability parameters. As the bike has already fallen into the high range of what we have set as an acceptable weight, we have chosen to not move forward with production.
"The goal of the bike, along with all of our products, is to provide a high quality tool that offers the best performance possible for its intended usage. Continuing with that tradition has resulted in the decision to develop a new platform for our competition-oriented full-suspension bike."
