We were lucky enough to get the chance to ride with the legendary Nicolas Vouilloz last week, as Michelin was launching its new MTB tyres (tune in shortly for the low-down). He's very fast (no surprises there then), and in a rare moment that he wasn't showing us up, we got a closer look at his Lapierre X-160.

Since winning his tenth World Championship title, Nico hasn't been seen on the race circuit much - instead he's turning his apparently bottomless pool of talent to rallying. He still rides the odd event however, including the Megavalanche series, proving in the process he's still one of the fastest guys on a bike. The Lapierre X-160 is the result of a couple of years of development, with a lot of Nico's feedback going into the final design.

Sporting 160mm of travel front and rear, the bike is clearly the company's all mountain machine. This is backed up with a solid spec of Fox 36 forks, Thomson stem and seatpost, SRAM transmission and Mavic Crossmax SX hoops. Nico's setup differs only very slightly from the stock model, the main departure being the Dura Ace chainset (for lighter weight) with a carbon chain guide. It's a winning design too, as Nico proved recently winning the Reunion Island round of the Megavalanche series.

We keep seeing Lapierre bikes and rather liking them - as far as we know no-one's bringing them into the UK at the moment, though.