Here’s the first actual Cervélo mountain bike

On Tuesday, Cervélo launched the ZHT-5, which the Canadian-founded bike brand stated was its first official mountain bike. But in fact, the first Cervélo mountain bike prototype dates back to the late ‘90s.

Dave Anthony, who was famously the company’s first full-time employee, as its R&D manager rode the first Cervélo MTB back in 1998.

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“The sample shares DNA with the earliest production asphalt bikes, the Eyre Tri and Eyre Road and thus picked up the nickname Eyre Dirt,” he said. “It was probably created with an eye on the possibilities of the Xterra off-road triathlons that started around the same time. However, it was a bit of a whimsy and was very low priority compared to the what were working on at the time, the ground-breaking next generation of aluminum aero bikes (P3, P2K, P2T, Soloist, One) and the steel frames (Renaissance, Super Prodigy, Prodigy); the raw frame sat in a carton (sharing space with the Baracchi, the company’s first bike) for a long time collecting dust.”

Anthony was the only mountain biker in the company at the time, so he eventually got around to getting it painted, in a classic P2K red, and built up.

“The TrueAero down tube counter intuitively worked pretty well on the hardtail because it was super stiff vertically which seemed to get more out of the suspension forks and laterally the airfoil down tube had a nice spring rate which seemed to return energy pedalling and carve well cornering.”