Three very eye-catching pictures and a couple of intriguing lines of text. Just what will the new Kona Process G2 actually be?

The Kona Process range of bikes is very, well… Kona. Idiosyncratic and with a firm focus on technical bike handling and having fun on the trail.

The Process bikes have been relatively unchanged for quite a while now. There’s good reason for this though; they were ahead the game with long, low and slack(ish) geometry. There was the mid travel Processes, the longer travel enduro Processes and the iconoclastic short travel but aggro 29er Process. All were progressive in their outlook.

All of these bikes have been aluminium. Rumours of plastic Processes have been around for a few months now. Some spy shots have eeked out on to the internet at some points but they were suitably blurry and not very detailed.

Some new pics have been released – nay, teased – by Kona themselves. And they show something called a ‘Process G2’. We assume the G2 stands for second generation.

The pics are on Kona’s own website. Right there on the homepage in fact. There’s no trawling around hidden pages or manually typing in URLs to access hidden away pages. They they are, front and centre. Boom.

There’s only three pics with some words written beneath them but from this info we can confidently surmise a few things.

There will be a carbon Kona Process. There’s no way those turquoise-tastic forms are done with aluminium.

Perhaps the most potentially significant change is the revised suspension system. No more yoke. The shock lies vertically.  The lower shock position is on the frame near the bottom bracket. And there’s an upper linkage rocker.

Have Kona gone the way of many of other brands in this post-Spesh-patent era and gone 4-bar Horst link? There’s no picture of the rear of the back to reveal if the pivot has moved to the chainstay (after years of being on the seat stay à la Faux Bar).

And what about Boost? And trunnion mounts? And metric shocks? None of those would be a surprise for a MY2018 bike.

What can we read between the lines of the lines of text?

“Climbing manners more commonly attributed to shorter-travel bikes”? – this sounds like it’s describing a longer travel bike then. 160mm travel 29er..?

“No switches to flip” – no flip chip geometry adjustment then. Why should there be though. Unless it’s a 29/27.5+ ‘either/or’ bike?

The full reveal will be on September 12th. Can’t wait. The Process is dead. Long live the Process.