"Hey, this guy is just like you," said a friend of Charles Kelly. Long hair, a regular at rock concerts and on his bike every spare minute. A few days later, Kelly met his doppelganger. It was his later mate Gary Fisher. Kelly and Fisher founded the Tampalais Velo Club in 1972. Joe Breeze also joined later. They thundered down the Californian mountains on 20-kilo "clunker" bikes. And because their bikes were never fast enough for them, they started tuning them. First, Gary Fisher installed a tandem hub gear and rode away from his mates uphill. Around two years later, Charles Kelly asked Joe Breeze to build him a bike. It cost 800 dollars, perhaps the first mountain bike. The bikes sold so well that soon people like Tom Ritchey and Jeff Lindsay from Mountain Goat were also building frames and selling them.
It was these pioneers of mountain biking who created the myth of US bikes. But what characterises US bikes and what has remained of the myth? The US brands were often trendsetters. In terms of suspension travel, new materials and also in terms of workmanship. Gary Klein, for example, was the first to install tubesets that were specially tailored to mountain bikes. Mountain Cycle presented the first big-travel bike with the San Andreas. Horst Leitner invented the four-bar fully. Milestones in the history of the sport.
In the mid-nineties, small companies such as Yeti or Klein, Breezer or Bontrager had to give up or were bought up by large corporations. Although the USA still produced high-tech, such as the FSR rear suspension system from Specialized or suspension forks like the Judy from Rock Shox, the competition from the Far East and Europe showed that they could also build high-quality bikes. Today, it is difficult to argue in favour of US bikes with sober calculation - the European products are also too good. However, the fascination of the bikes under the starry banner remains unique. After all, individuality and tradition cannot be measured in bare figures.
The US cult bikes in this test:
Intense Spider XVP
Klein Attitude Comp
Merlin XLM
Moots Smoothie
Mountain Cycle SLIX
Santa Cruz Blur
