[Closed] So when did Orange stop doing the P7 frame?

Someone mentioned a while back that it was missing from this years line-up. I think it would be a little sad if they've discontinued it after all this time, but then again people seem to have fallen out of love with it. What can they do?

tmb467 - Member

Just went to have a look and they don't do steel anymore!

500 quid for a soul seems a lot too ...

Hang on, you were looking for a £350 cromo frame, but you think £500 for a Soul is too expensive?

Get an On One, they are cheap.

Clockwork is now an alu 29er

It's worse than VW relaunching the scirocco...my first bike lust was a clockwork orange

No. I was looking to compare how much a p7 frame was when I saw the price of a Soul

Then saw it wasn't there - or more that I didn't see it

I've been away from it all for a while - so yeah, in my mind half a grand for a steel frame is pretty expensive - they get a good press on here tho

When people stopped buying it? Or when Orange stopped being bothered about it? Always seemed an almost forgotten frame (IMHO) - awful matt black paint jobs, clunky SS dropouts, no innovation just plodding along til it died it seems.

Looking at the market with the likes of the Soul, Genesis stuff, Pipedream etc there still seems to be a very healthy market for a lightweight steel hardtail built around a 130/140mm fork. Sure if they brought it back, made it look a lot prettier (hey, it sells!), lighter, stuck some nice looking normal dropouts on it and a 44mm headtube or something they'd sell them.

Does seem a shame that its been dropped and yet they're (or are they?) still doing those road frames and a Cross bike is in the works. That said, I did have a reasonable look at a prototype of one of their cross bikes the other week and it did look lovely.

I love my P7, not the lightest bike in the world but I've ridden it everywhere from blue grade trail centre trails to full on double black run down hill tracks and although it's not as quick as a full sus on the really techy downhill stuff it still gets me to the bottom smiling my face off and I can't seem to break the bugger, absolutly great frame

Orange are good at churning out exactly the same frame year after year.

For some reason, people buy the full suspension bikes.

For some other reason, no one is arsed about the same hardtails.

I wish they'd start designing proper bikes again.

The P7 got silly heavy after the CEN test requirements came in. IMO, instead of being clever with design they just added material to it. Maybe people stopped buying it when it got too heavy?

Think its partly rediscovering that I still love biking after several years of work and finance related reasons for not doing it, and thinking back to my P7 from years ago

Now gone full sus but there's a part of me wants a lightish steel ht (tho I'm not precious about the material - just reminiscing over exactly that point above ^^^^^ bramblerash

Love how confident I've got on my enduro and just wondering if I should now spend cold hard cash building up something different

you may have a point, however, my P7 is pre cen and its not exactly light.
i guess orange will sell what (enough) people want, its not economic to sell 50 frames a year, hence the road bike and cross bike on the way.

[url= http://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/cen-safety-regulations-and-the-demise-of-the-steel-hardtail ]Just found this old thread[/url] and I've now learnt something new

So - how much is a second hand Soul frame 😀

Recently bought a 10 year old P7 frame from the classifies and built myself my first ever singlespeed and love it - great handling bike

Isn't a Cotic Bfe a closer match to a P7? They are £329 new which is less than the P7 frames were selling for.

http://www.cotic.co.uk/product/BFe

stuck some nice looking normal dropouts

They did, and called it the Pure7.