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Under the line I still don't see a narrow rear end as THAT big of an advantage, as your situation is a bit of an edge case. You could say a narrower rear end will enable you to go through narrow gulleys, but there are still the pedals and the feet to deal with.
I'd buy the heel rub & co. as the more important reason, but again, I'm one of the riders that has never had an issue with this (never really damaged a frame or a crank through pedalling), so I can't put myself in those shoes.
all it resulted in was huge wheel flex in berms lol. Shit idea. But good on paper I suppose.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CE4zlIMpSQh/?igshid=1d5m5he7giru0
I forgot to save the image myself before it was taken down. Definitely no traditional horst-link. Looks almost like an Epic EVO rear end mated to current Stumpy front triangle (albeit longer/slacker).
And the specs listed a 45mm(?!) stroke shock. I can't imagine a shock that short for anything over 120mm. But the specs didn't say it was the ST model that had that shock. So if the bike is 130mm, that's a high 2.89 leverage ratio. No way they're using 45mm to get 140mm. So this lends to the thought there is a Stumpy that's a 120mm bike. Then maybe a Stumpy EVO with 140mm and possibly horst link. Then the Enduro to top of their trail range.
https://www.santacruzbicycles.com/en-US/bikes/megatower
Also, if you go by your logic, you have the Demo 9.
Not sure what year the Legend came out but I think VPP came from Outland back in the mid to late 90s.
Regarding more travel, if you use a thinner and longer section for the flex stays you can get a whole lot of travel. Or with the correct link arrangement, you can get very small rotations of the rear link (or the flex part). And so on. There is a lot of talk that flex stays only go up to X travel. Yet modern airliners have wings that go to near vertical at the tips through their flex (in the destructive test for the wings).
All you have to do is to make the structure deform to the point you need and to ensure the stresses in the deformation are low enough. How to do that and if that is practical from a manufacturing point of view and how it affects other parts of a design is a different story on the other hand.
Maybe some of the boutique Ti frames are doing it?
But I'm still saying it's not impossible to make a flex stay bike with 150+ mm of travel. Impractical maybe but not impossible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lforMUieF8s