Cyclist
MTB brand Lee Cougan launches full suspension gravel bike with 60mm clearance
Lee Cougan has launched the Super Gravel monster gravel bike with clearance for 60mm tyres and full front and rear suspension.
The Super Gravel is available as a mullet build complete bike for €5,299 / $5,899 or frameset-only for €2,799 / $3,299.
Oil damped pivotless rear suspension
Despite its name, Lee Cougan is actually an Italian brand, although it was founded in the US in the 1970s, riding the early MTB wave. The brand name was bought by Italian distributor Stardue in the 1990s, with the bikes now designed and assembled in Italy alongside Basso road and gravel bikes.
The Super Gravel is Lee Cougan’s first foray into the world of gravel, with its range otherwise MTB-focussed. It lets you fit 60mm / 2.4 inch tyres, with a conventional suspension fork offering 100mm of front suspension, paired with 30mm of rear travel through Lee Cougan’s patented pivotless Innova system.
Rather than a separate rear triangle with pivots, as seen in most full suspension mountain bikes, the Super Gravel relies on flex in the chainstays. It’s the same approach as used by Cannondale for its Kingpin suspension in the Topstone Carbon gravel bike, which also boasts 30mm rear travel.
While Cannondale relies on a bushing in the seat tube for the travel in the connection between the seatstays and the rest of the frame, Lee Cougan’s Innova rear suspension has oil pistons to dampen the travel, which it says improves traction and reduces energy loss. It uses the same system on some of its XC MTBs, where the suspension performance is tuned to the weight and riding style of the rider.
Lee Cougan says that the system is very light, with a size M frame with hardware having a claimed weight of 1.2kg. The suspension fork and the big tyres add a little mass, giving a complete bike a claimed weight of 11kg.
There’s a slack 69-degree head tube, again following a trend to sub-70° head tube angles on gravel bikes, also found for example in the Argonaut Supernaut GR3, YT Szepter and BMC URS. That’s coupled with a 73° seat tube and 428mm chainstay length.
Other features of the Lee Cougan Super Gravel include a full set of mounting points on the frame, so the bike can be set up for load lugging, and an Acros Block Lock headset, which restricts how far the bars can turn to help avoid top tube strikes in a crash.
As you’d expect from a gravel bike aimed at extreme terrain, there’s a mullet build available to add low gear range, in this case with a 34t chainring and a 10-52t cassette which offer a very low ratio below 1.5:1. It comes with a mix of SRAM Rival and SRAM GX Eagle, a Fox Factory Kashima 32 fork with lockout and Microtech RK50 wheels. Tyres are CST Jack Rabbit 2.25 inch. It’s priced at €5,299 / $5,899.
You can also buy a frame kit for €2,799 / $3,299.
2025 is shaping up to be the year of monster gravel bikes. Only last week, we had the launch of the Ridley Ignite GTX, geometry corrected for 100mm travel forks. Continental has got into the act too, with its Terra Adventure gravel tyres boasting widths up to 55mm – too wide for the majority of gravel bikes, which are yet to have the monster treatment.
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