Mountain Bike Kona Frame
Serious Mountain Bike Predicament!!!!?
Who’s who? What’s what. Not long ago, brands like Kona, Santa Cruz, Cannondale, & Gary Fisher ruled the American singletrack. Now what’s this I hear about “Giant is on the rise,” “C’Dale makes poor quality frames, and their unique suspension designs don’t work,” and “Trek makes better bikes that anything Gary Fisher can produce.” Are the members of mountain biking forums all over the web deceptive liars, or is this stuff true!??!?!? Here’s what I want: Give me a list of your current top five in the mountain biking industry and why they’re there. Thanks.
Who’s who? It’s a kinda hard question, it’s like asking the same for car makers.
The way I see the brands,at least brands in the american market, there are some big name brands that still keep their reputation, like Specialized, Trek (they are improving their designs a lot, their new suspension makes them intresting, before they were pretty so-so), Cannondale (but they just recently got sold and it’s hard to know where they are heading). Giant has redesigned their full suspension bike about 3 or 2 years ago to the Maestro design, which has gotten good reviews.
There are boutique bikes, which are more expensive, but you do get what you pay for. Brands like Turner, Titus, Santa Cruz, Foes, Knolly, Ventana, Yeti are a lot smaller, usually don’t offer a complete line of frames (the usually specialize in one segment).
Maybe the top five in the first category would be:
1. Specialized
2. Giant
3. Cannondale
4. Trek
5. I dunno……
And boutique:
1. Knolly
2. Intense
3. Titus,
4. Turner
5. Ventana
And there are always some intresting bikes that are small, but offer more reasonable priced frames, like Transition, Cove and others.
kona Mountain Bike Frames
