Price: £3,000.00 (frame only) From: Salsa UK, lyon.co.uk

Salsa has been a well-known bike and accessory brand for decades, particularly in the niche cycling markets with a focus on bikes for adventure. It has an impressively extensive catalogue from gravel and all-road touring models, to fat bikes and mountain bikes.

the mountain bike range is six models strong, including a few hardtail bikes and one for little humans. the full suspension bikes all utilise the Split Pivot suspension platform designed by Dave Weagle, but hold your horses (sorry) more about that in a minute. the Salsa Horsethief holds the middle ground in the mountain bike line-up with regards to travel, with a 140mm fork and 120mm in the back. the Rustler trail bike, with its 27.5 wheels, 150mm fork out front and 130mm shock in the rear, bookends the range. the opposite end of the line-up is the Spearfish cross-country bike with 120mm forks and 100mm of rear travel. All the models carry familiar styling, shape and the Salsa identity.

Salsa offers a range of colours for the Horsethief, from a loud yellow and a bright blue for those who prefer a ride to stand out against the backdrop, to the dark green (shown here) and the stealth black options that will help you sneak about under the radar without being noticed. this colour - a matt dark army green - is tastefully understated and acts as a good background for the strikingly bright logo lettering. In the UK the carbon frame will come as a frameset only and the XT spec seen here will be available as a special order.

the Horsethief was first unleashed on the mountain bike world almost ten years ago. the principles of the bike have remained the same, to take the rider up and over yonder on all day adventures and be ready to slay singletrack; the perfect all-mountain trail bike. It has had to grow into the world of ever-evolving technology, industry standards and geometry changes since then.