Looking at the 15 bikes we wish we’d owned piece on the front page, memories of early GT marketing came flooding back when I saw that they’d included a Zaskar.

I have no real interest in GT, as I had two in the early 1990s and never really liked them; but was well impressed with the whole ‘triple triangle’ thing when it was talked about in all the magazines back then.

Was there any real benefit at the time? And considering GT still deploys it in their designs, is there any benefit now? Or is it just a trademark look that they tried to rationalise back in the day?

No benefit whatsoever . Just to make the bikes easier to identify .

Ball burnished Hetchins?

Well in theory a longer seat stay should be better at “damping” any vibration, but then they welded them to the seat tube and the top tube sort of negating that benefit, but then you do get more weld area, making it (again theoretically) stronger in that area… And of course marginally heavier than a typically laid out frame…
Oh and because the stays converge further along you should be able to have more mud clearance, assuming they’re straight…

But yeah more than anything it was just brand identity, you could always recognise a GT frame.