After last year’s big investment in the NRGy series, Nordica spent carefully on the 2016 product cycle, fiddling with a few formulas at the fringes of their line. For example, last year’s El Capo keeps its shape but switches to the I-Core Torsion Bridge construction and presto, you have the NRGy 107. There’s a new Fire Arrow carver, the 80 Ti EVO, but Nordica has had an 80 EVO in their line in the not-so-misty past and they’ve always had a Ti alternative to the “go fast or else” FA 84 EVO EDT, so the 80 Ti EVO feels like we already know it.
A more important re-mix model for the fat-idolizing American market is the re-modeled 100mm Enforcer, which marries a twin-tip shape to a World Cup construction with two sheets of Titanium. As the name implies, the Enforcer is a big boy’s ski, now with a gal pal, the women’s Santa Ana, which copies the Enforcer’s footprint but builds it around a balsa wood core.
If this sounds as though Nordica didn’t invest much in new tooling for 2016, consider that this year they’re reincarnating the Dobermann boot line and resurrecting a Grand Prix collection. The capital costs to create even one new boot series are brutal. As a brand that built their consumer following as a boot maker, it’s eminently understandable why boots gobbled up most of the alpine R&D budget.