The Evolution of Deviate - a path less trodden
Deviate is a relatively new company - established in 2016 in Scotland - and founded on the conviction of two friends, Chris Deverson and Ben Jones, that there were Better Bikes out there, just waiting to be made. But these wouldn’t be any old order-from-the-catalogue bikes, no. To produce the bikes they wanted to, Chris and Ben would have to turn away from the established path of suspension design - to deviate, if you will.
And so the name was born.
OUR VISION:
TO ACCELERATE THE EVOLUTION OF MOUNTAIN BIKE DESIGN, FOR AND WITH RIDERS
But before all of this, it might perhaps be instructive to tell a tale of a student.
Chris Deverson was his name, studying Mechanical Engineering at the University of the West of England. A borderline obsessive mountain biker, Chris regularly availed himself of the local trails around Ashton Court, Leigh Woods and further afield; racing occasionally, and using his highly tuned engineering mind to consider the Platonic Ideal of the Perfect Bike.
Exceptionally able, after graduating Chris landed himself a job at Prodrive, designing and developing the I6 Turbo Le Mans engine while travelling to the race tracks of the world. But the pull of bikes was just too strong. Alongside consultancy work, designing submarine systems and modifications to nuclear test facilities, Chris found himself guiding mountain bikers in New Zealand and France, and it was here, in Les Arcs in the French Alps, that he met fellow guide and future colleague Ben Jones.
Chris Deverson with the Guide
A firm friendship built on opposites was inevitable.
The quiet and analytical Chris contrasted with the more outgoing and forthright Ben as they worked for years riding and guiding in the some of the most challenging mountain terrain there is. After experiencing week after week of bike breakages, both within the guiding fleet and the customers bikes, it was clear to Chris and Ben that the need for a better bike was pressing. However, the journey to Deviate was a little more tortuous yet, there were still a few more pieces left to play…
Chris, still mulling over motorsport-steeped ideas of the perfect bike, took a job guiding in New Zealand. It was here that he experienced a revelation, riding a gearbox driven high-pivot mountain bike with an idler for the first time. It was clear that this particular design - yet to be perfected - was a step in the right direction and that a High Pivot suspension platform was the way to go.
In the mean time, Ben (seen below on the Guide) had started his own guiding company, and was rapidly finding himself in need of an extra pair of hands. He called upon his old mate Chris to come and help out, planning trails and guiding across Europe - and it was during this time that Ben’s organisational acumen began to merge with Chris’ technical aspirations.
from friendship to business owners
Deviate was first conceived in the Cairngorms National Park during a guided trip that Ben and Chris had put on for a group of friends. It was on one of these rides, in the heart of the National Park, that they decided to formalise their ideas and create a new bike company.
2022 was something of a seminal year for Deviate following the success of the award-winning Claymore. To mark its success, we wanted to celebrate our roots by telling the story of our inception. To do so, we partnered with local artist Douglas Roulston to create a very special custom Claymore inspired by the Cairngorms.
Watch the full story and read more about the project on the link below.
Chris riding an early prototype of the Guide
Initial prototypes, crafted in Chris’ shed, were somewhat less than pretty - but all of them served to crystallise the ideas that were forming in Chris’ mind.
Gearbox, derailleur, shaft drive - all were assessed. What to make the fledgling frame from?
Aluminium was considered, but in the small numbers that Deviate was starting out with, the aluminium tooling costs were very similar to carbon moulding costs.
So carbon it was.
An early prototype of the Guide
And, finally.
There. After a decade of riding in the UK, the Alps and New Zealand, Chris and Ben unveiled Deviate’s first production bike - the Guide.
Standing in magnificent isolation from more mainstream designs, a gearbox removed the derailleur, and moved the drivetrain weight more centrally, reducing the rear wheel’s unsprung mass. A clever linkage system kept the weight down low. A high pivot (but not too high) with an idler worked with that light back end to produce an exquisite suspension feel, and a bike that was enormously capable.
Moving with the times…
After the Guide, Deviate began to realise that this setup was too ‘different’ for most riders. The gearbox concept was new, the high-pivot suspension system too. With this, Chris began working on a non-gearbox, high-pivot bike range, namely The Highlander and The Claymore. Shortly after the Claymore launch is was clear that the shift toward more ‘conventional’ bikes paid off. The Claymore was voted Pinkbikes enduro bike of choice in their 2022 enduro test session and not long after, was nominated for the Mountain Bike Of The Year award.
The Pinkbike 2022 field Test Results: The Deviate Claymore
But where to next?
Hardly ones to rest on their laurels, Ben and Chris wondered where to take the brand. A new kind of trail bike, perhaps? One that could build on that solid reputation, and use some of the same design thinking. A trail bike - long of leg, and astonishingly capable, but with more of an all-round purview. Yes. Chris and Ben listened to their following (now known as ‘the Clan’).
The Highlander, then, echoes the Guide in many important ways. It’s made of carbon. It has the high pivot/idler combination, tweaked for trail riding. But perhaps most obviously, it differs in one obvious regard - the lack of gearbox.
Ben and Chris took a long hard look at what they wanted the bike to do, and after a bunch of back to back testing they decided that a rear mech was the best fit for the fast, agile bike they wanted to make. And we may be biased, but frankly, it rips.
