The Soul is our founding product. The reason for all this. The dream bike that I designed when no one else made it. The icon. It has been in constant production across 5 generations and 17 years. However, unfortunately there comes a point where demand for a product slows and we can't viably keep making it available, and I had to make the tough decision. Unfortunately, a light and lively 27.5" wheel trail hardtail has now been overtaken by the 29" wheels of the SolarisMAX (one of our biggest selling models) as an all-rounder, or people are going burly with their 27.5" wheels with the BFe.

What a run it's been. Here's the Soul down the years....

Here's the original prototype number 1, my bike, in 2002. Test graphics trying out ideas. We still have this bike hanging up at Unit 6 down at HQ.

Our launch event, June 2003, Mountain Mayhem. All four of us managed to be riding Souls for the event, with Paul and Kelvin on the - now notorious - accidentally barbie pink frames. Here's Paul's very first Soul, in typical fashion for him still managing to look amazing despite the frame colour!

And shut up about that shirt. I LOVE that shirt!

2004 brought along the V1.2 frames, which introduced some of the definitive Cotic features - big clearance S-bend stays, with no chainstay bridge and gussets on the BB and the panel graphics. These were vinyls in a bunch of colours that my wife fitted to each frame in our kitchen!

And an award - happily the first of many. The Soul won Best Hardtail Under £1500 in only the first year of production. Chuffed to bits!

2009 brought the Gen2 frame, modified to meet the incoming CEN (now ISO) lab testing regs. It was beefed up and made compatible with 140mm forks, but I managed to peg the weight the same as the previous version. Also brought The One True Colour (orange) back into production, which I was very happy about!

Onwards to June 2012, when amongst the noise of the first Rocket launch, we sprung a brand new Soul (Gen3) and BFe (Gen2) onto an unsuspecting world. This would be the last of the Souls with 26" wheels, and retained the originals geometry. We still loved it despite it blowing the candles out on it's 9th birthday at that point. As it's always been a Modern Steel Hardtail, it was moving with the times again - oversized seat tube, and tapered head tube kept up with the changing standards. And it was still orange ;-)

So, to the first major change in the life of the Soul - 27.5" wheels. This bike started life as what should have been another batch of Soul Gen3 26" wheel frames. The change happened that fast. I remember being at Eurobike in 2013 and feeling like I'd been mugged by the entire industry! We got prototypes double quick (luckily I was already working on a design), and in order to sign them off quickly, Paul and I trucked down to Luchon to our friend Ian Potter at AQR Holidays in the first week of November. We had 9 bikes - small, medium, large, in 26", 27.5" and (Solaris) 29". After a weeks' intensive testing (and nearly getting caught in the first snow of the winter), we signed off what became the Soul275 - or Gen4.

And finally Gen5 - La Revolution! Introducing Longshot geometry onto our lightest and liveliest bike took quite some doing. Paul did a lot of the work using a damaged Soul275 which had the front end hacked off and Longshot geometry front triangle welded back on. It had the ability to run anglesets, so we worked hard on figuring out where the balance between "lively" and "twitchy" was. Once we got the "Eureka" setting, it was so much fun to ride.

Although I engineered this bike, I have to say this really is Paul's bike. He worked so hard on this, trying out so many different head angle and setup options to get it right. If you saw him (probably flying past you at speed) on a ropey looking black/blue frame at Ard Rock 2017 (below), then that was the prototype! Sadly, it's also the end of the Soul story. The best Soul we ever made was also the last.

So that's it - the end of an era. We have the last Souls in stock now, in XS, medium and large, in orange or blue. No more small I'm afraid. Grab your piece of history.

One constant through the whole of the Souls life has been Singletrack Magazine. They were the first people to speak to a random bloke with a new bike design, and the first magazine with a full test, all the way back in Issue 9. they described as a Land Rover Defender, which given that iconic vehicle went out of production a couple of years is pretty poignant!

Singletrack still have a Cotic offer on, 50% off annual subs taken out this month. Just head over and enter the code "COTICTRACK" for £19.50 off a years' worth of mountain bike media goodness.