- [Neil] Mountain bike technology has progressed so much over the last 25 years.
Bikes have become lighter, faster and stronger, but not all of those bikes have
been design classics. And, actually, not all of them are good looking,
come to think of it.
- [Marc] Yeah, that's true. Some of you have said "Weird" others have said "Ugly."
I'd leave it up to you guys to decide. So, let's take a look at our top 10
weirdest mountain bikes.
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- Well V-shape, it certainly is. Cannondale were really pioneers in
developing full suspension bikes in the early 90s, but it definitely is a bit
funny looking.
- Yeah, big tubes, striking angles, and that headshot design,
finished off with curly bar ends. What a look.
- Pretty 90s.
- The Whyte had a radical design that certainly made it stand out from the
crowd, and I don't mean radical in a good way. However, they were loved by a small
bunch of people for their excellent cross-country characteristics.
That was by anyone who was brave enough be seen on one in public.
- Yeah, it's that really unusual-looking plus four fork on the front uses an
air-shock, and they were designed not to dive under heavy brakings.
The head angle actually stays the same. Apparently, they're really hard to set up,
and also, I dread to think what the maintenance would be like.
- The made in New York, Brooklyn, in fact. You'd never guess that.
The company is now actually part-owned by Ferrell Williams, so Brooklyn is
definitely a cool brand. They definitely don't follow the rule books when
designing bikes.
- Yeah, definitely remembered for massive amounts of suspension, largely overbuilt.
- No, they weighed in at about 65 pounds, some of these big old things.
Ugly, I don't think so, but definitely unusual.
- Well, it's not exactly a crazy concept, having the frame tubes with those sort
of bends in is definitely unusual.
- The angles of a seat stays and that large suspension linkage definitely
makes it stand out from all those other brands that uses four bar linkage.
Whether or not that's a design feature, or just something to make it look different,
who knows.
This is a definite case of function over form, so we should cut the
Carpet a little bit of slack. This bike was designed to let Josh Bender ride
things that were definitely not considered before.
- You can't take away from him what he achieved on this bike
was definitely pushing the boundaries of the sport, but actually,
it was purely designed to do massive drops and probably had little use for anything
else.
- Yeah, it was hugely overbuilt, really heavy, 12 inches of travel,
you wouldn't want to try and paddle or corner this thing.
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- I would file this under "What the hell were they thinking?"
Just as the Gerban Flex stem was supposed to provide damping free hands with a small
flex in the stem. This is what they aim to do with the top tube and seat post if you
like, providing a little bit of flex and therefore a softer ride on your bottom.
- There's a long beam mounted at the top tube to give the saddle a bit of
damping. I guess somewhat okay if you're sat down pedaling, if you don't mind your
effective saddle moving all the time, but totally useless when you're stood up.
Not the easiest bike to mount to your car roof rack, the slingshot actually
uses a steel cable, instead of a regular down tube.
- Yeah, the idea was to use a spring and cable system to return the
energy lost during a pedal stroke.
- Not exactly a flash in the pan, the Slingshots. They've been making these
bikes for 29 years.
- Neil, one thing I'd like to ask you, would you like to take it on your
local trails?
- I would be slightly intrigued but a little bit scared, I think.
- Yeah, I think I'd agree with you there.
Let me start by saying that their modern version is actually a very
nice-looking bike, but the evolution, perhaps not so much.
- Yeah, the first demos have two sets of seat stays. To me, they're really
sort of weighty and unwieldy. You didn't need all that framework on there.
- One thing worth mentioning, though, two seat stays or not,
that bike has won two world championship gold medals.
- Can't argue with that.
Designed by suspension guru Chris Porter, not a person scared of pushing the
envelope and putting his money where his mouth is, this takes the relatively new
idea of Ford technology, basically a long reach on the bike, to a whole new level.
- Yeah, based around a very slack head angle upfront and a long cockpit for
the rider to move around in plus a massive wheelbase. So obviously super stable when
it comes to high speeds.
- Yeah, available in three different sizes, long, longer and longest,
this is not a normal mountain bike.
- Using a URT suspension design, the Klein Mantra is not only one of the
ugliest bikes we've ever seen, but also one of the worst performing ones.
- URT is quite a floor design, because the bottom bracket is actually
part of the rear suspension. So the only time you really benefit from the
suspension is when you're sat down.
- So that's it for our top 10 weirdest bikes. If you feel that we have
missed some, please don't forget leave them in the comments below.
We'd like to see them.
- Sure we have so send us your freak bikes down there. If you want to see
more videos from GMBN, you can click up there for our top 10 mountain bike
innovations.
- Yeah, and if you'd like to see more of the Nicolai Geometron,
don't forget to check out Martin's back on track video, just click up here.
- I'll take it down there Marc, because if they click up there,
there goes the other one.
- Don't worry, click down there. That's it.
- Or click on us to subscribe to the channel.
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