In ’91 a guy living at my other halfs student house had a purple Kona Lavadome. Loved that bike.
I had a clapped out 2nd hand 10 speed racer…. 😳
But a year later I bought a Trek 930 Singletrack at an auction and that’s where the long list of ‘proper’ bikes started. Now I feel old… 🙂

Muddy Fox Courier. But LBS never had any in stock so I settled for a yellow Specialised Hard Rock (with the chain stay U brake…)

tbh – i’d be quite happy just to have the legs that could turn over that gearing on bencoopers Yeti C26 😉

I wanted one of those oversize tubed cannondale jobs hanging in Evans in Woking.

oops just realised this thread is what did you want, not what bike you started on.. ignore my first post!

I always lusted after one of these.

Or Shaun Palmer’s Intense M1.

It was the San Andreas, but then these always looked cool in the magazines:

Would probably have been a horror show to ride.

Not so much when I first started biking, but more something I came to harbour a desire for but, sadly, never bought.

The Rocky Mountain Blizzard (and it would have to be in the pictured black/white maple leaf colour scheme.)

Like knightrider I wanted a Mountain Cycle San Andreas. I still do!

Yep found a pic, looked something like this.

1993 Cinder Cone. Also (obvs) the titanium Hei Hei, but the Cinder Cone was frustratingly just-out-of-reach rather than pie-in-the-sky.

I shared your pain.

’98 Kona Cindercone

Or a Kona Chute after reading an article in MBUK with someone riding one in a quarry.

Ended up with a Scott Apache. Changed the forks for a pair of RST281 added V-brakes. I loved that bike and it had a hard life.

Actually, I think I still want one of these

Has to be this, followed by the Ti mega Alpinestars, and then the first Klein Adroit

That GT that bikeytom posted – drool.

One of those or a Team MBUK Santa Cruz Heckler, or a Marin Quake 9.0 (the monocoque aluminium thingy)

when I first started, I was a bit too old to “get” the buggering about in the woods thing. Only bought one because my mate made me. Rigid Scott of some sort

That soon got nicked from my garage but it did the job on me

Replacements were from a wishlist series of second-hand offers in the local adrag:

Killi-something (the Ti one, with a Pace fork I think) – lovely but he wanted too much for it
cannondale xc-racey thing – **** me it was light but looked like it had led a bloody hard life and I chickened out
proflex of some sort – felt a little bit like magic but his gears weren’t set up well (or maybe the frame wes flexing?) and it put me off
ended up with a Zaskar LE

A few weeks later I was riding about and met a lad on one of those manitou FS things. It looked amazing and he could jump more than a foot on it !!

was at least 5 more years before I got another bike, though the zaskar had a few upgrades along the way (forks with springs in, and other amaaazing shit like that)

We used to speak in hushed tones about Merlins in the early 90’s:

Either that, or a Dave Lloyd. A friend’s parents bought him the Beez Neez, the very one that MBUK had reviewed and put on their cover:

The skinny top and down tubes cracked behind the headtube within a month or two, it was repaired and resprayed a graphite-bluish colour, and on the first ride they started to bulge in the same places again… not a great frame; we never got up to anything particularly rad.

My first MTB was a Raleigh, 87 I think. First bike I really wanted after that was the Ozark,

And later the black crackle effect Avanti.

Then the 88 Cinder Cone when that came out. We all wanted one.
I got a Marin Pine Mountain 89 next, not sure why I went for that over the Kona now but it was a great bike.

The pools-win bike would have been the classic Klein Attitude

I actually had one of these in 1997.

but when I tried it again about 10 years later I found that it was utterly appalling in every way. Apart form the paint job.

1995 I think.

Nice to see some love for the merlin titanium, that was the second mountain bike that I owned and I still use it. Short rigid forks, 1″ headset, roller cam brake and press fit bottom bracket are some of the ongoing problems with a bike of that era but I really wouldn’t want to part with it.

Ah, not MBUK, it was MTB Pro. This was the review, the images are of the actual bike my mate got knocked down a bit from RRP.

“Despite Lloyd’s convictions to the contrary, we have our reservations about the long-term wisdom of using super-slim top and down tubes on a bike that’s bound to occasionally appeal to riders who like to push their machines to the limit”

No shit, it only took a few months for a tall but not-overweight, non-jumping twelve year old to break that frame 😀

Earliest remembered object of my affections:

After that I was more into Raliegh DH’s, Patriots, ATX’s and the ultimate:

I don’t care if they cracked, they were awesome.

Seem to remember a lot of ATX DH’s kicking about the forums (SDH mostly) as well as at least one of the prototype “FSR” linkaged variants.

Eventually I got into a bigger is better mindset which saw me with a Le Toy III whilst lusting after a Doc era BMW Racelink.

Like a few others my first ‘want’ was a Marin Pine Mountain. I’d bought a Giant Escaper EOS ‘bargain’ in a friendly 23″ sized flavour… 😯

Replaced with another Escaper (duh) crucially in 19″ this time. Triple butted, although I thought they got it wrong. They seemed to have added material not taken it away, damn thing weighed a ton, about 30 lbs!

I always really lusted after an Amp B4 (used to buy MBA and they rarely let an issue go by without one). They seemed to be made of cheese though.

I also really, really wanted a litespeed (pisgah?) in the late 90’s. They weren’t being imported into the UK at that point and I contacted them direct. They wouldn’t sell direct to me, insisting on going through a bike shop. Unsurprisingly no local shop was interested so I had to let that dream fade…

As a teenager I wanted a RC100 and I still want one now.

When I got in to mtbs again I wanted a Whyte and I’m glad I didn’t waste my money on one.

(my forbidden link was a Mk2 Santa Cruz Super 8 in yellow with Boxxers and THE mudguards)

Was either a gt zaskar or an allsop soft ride. Ended up with an MBK from Charlie Brown’s up the road from 2 wheels in Stourbridge. All my mates had Raleigh mustangs.

Always wanted a Merlin, they were THE bike in the 90s. Never got one and settled for a RM Blizzard.

back in 2000 I didn’t know much about bikes (don’t now tbf) and never used to spend long looking at the 2 and 3k Kleins etc that were in Free Spirit at Meadowhall so my ambitions only stretched as far as this. Carrera Hellcat. Yours for £850 from Halfords.

that is immense btw. Did anyone own/ride one of these?

Someone commutes to work near me on a yellow mantra. They do look awesome even today.

For me it was a nickel p7 and an SC Bullit, silver with yellow psylos. Wish I has bought and owned both now. It’s funny that most dream bikes retain their status.