CUBE STEREO HYBRID 140 HPA RACE 500
£3,699 Neat details lift Cube’s Stereo above the crowd noise
Cube’s Stereo Hybrid 140 bikes sit mid-range in their motorised line-up. While the HPA Race’s conventional handling and brakes struggle to tame its extra mass, tyre and fork tweaks make it a tough – if noisy – all-rounder.
The frame
With its multiple angled facets, this is an impressive-looking chassis. Big hollow-backed links control the fourbar rear end, and the motor mount gets reinforcing straps around the base of the 500Wh Bosch battery. The dropper post and brake/gear lines are internally routed. Tyre space between the massive rear stays is tight even with the 2.35in rubber supplied though, and the overall shape of the bike is conservative.
The kit
Speccing a reinforced 'Super Gravity' rear tyre dodges pinch flat issues and opens up lower pressures. The Fox 34 fork isn't the e-specific version but the KMC chain is strengthened. Shifting onto the biggest 46t cog isn’t as slick with Shimano as with SRAM though, and the FSA crankset is a typically skinny-looking Bosch-fit unit. The left-hand Purion display leaves central bar space for lights, etc, and the internal Concept dropper has a healthy 150mm stroke. It's a good spec for the price.
The ride
While the 2.35in tyres don’t have the cushioned footprint of plus rubber (look to the £4,299 HPA SL 500 for that), knowing that the rear is reinforced makes the Cube less stressful to plough into rocks on. It rewards that commitment too, with an impressively smooth action from the Fox dampers once you inject enough speed and force to push them past their high level of lowspeed compression damping.
The 34 fork doesn't have the beefed up e-chassis and isn’t Boostwidth like the back end, so it's twisty under braking and cornering. But the extra motor/battery weight pushes it through the mid stroke where it normally spikes and clatters, making it feel more composed than the RockShox Yari on drop and rockriddled DH runs – a first for a midlevel 34. The Float shock also feels less notchy than normal. Combined with the four-bar linkage and low and rearward main pivot, this means the Cube trucks on impressively in straight line, high-impact situations. You’re going to want to add volume spacers at both ends though, due to the linear shock character.
The handling isn’t so well set up to cope with runaway mass. The 67.5-degree head angle is OK for a 140mm bike but the 740mm bar and 90mm stem reduce steering leverage and reaction speed. You need to really haul on the XT levers to slow things down, and at that point, the front tyre starts to hit its traction limits. While nearly all the bikes in this test have a short reach, that doesn’t make the stumpy ride position of the Cube feel any more surefooted.
As well as having a rattly battery, the Bosch motor is intrusively noisy. It also takes a while to learn to tame the sudden lurch of its undiluted pick-up on slippery or steep terrain. We kept nudging the mode selector accidentally too. Those are Bosch, not Cube issues, though, and they’re tempered with the most dramatic drag-race kick of any motor set-up if that’s what you want.