Having read a couple of threads on new bikes, wheel size, materials, head angles and all that malarkey. I got to wondering is it all marketing? I love deeply the yeti sb66 carbon as its interesting and lovely looking. But then I go to the garage and see an eight inch travel trail bike and a five and a bit trail bike both short stems and bash guards. Both twenty six inch rims, one was tubeless but I thought it was cr*p so went back to tubes and like it more.
Both bikes are at least eight years old and have had updates when things wore out.
The big bike is the one I ride more, it’s heavy and a bit sluggish up but then so am I. So back to the wondering how is it I utterly love these bikes but the marketing has me hankering. I won’t give in but I’ll continue to hanker.
I love riding a bike. Don’t give a flying stuff about it being new, am I wrong?

I know what you mean. I keep window shopping but there isn’t anything better suited to my riding than the 7 and 8 year old bikes I’m riding now.

I though that until a couple of weeks ago when my Mondraker arrived.
I loved the way my old mk1 ID5 rode, always been really impressed with the way it handled but the Dune is a whole different kettle of fish.

The suspesnion is an eye opener compared with the GT, with 30mm more travel but a whole load easier to ride across stuff. Don’t get me wrong, the GT is still a good bike but I’m soo glad I finally bit the bullet & decided to upgrade.

I should say that I swapped most of the components over from the GT so I’m using exactly the same drive train , brakes, stem, bar, dropper, etc (the only things not swapped were the fork & wheels) so I think it’s a pretty fair comparison.