Somone kindly posted a link to a test that MBUK did between a Fat Chance Team and the original Pace RC100 on another thread. That got me thinking; the Pace was such a massive leap forward in terms of engineering – it incorporated so many firsts that were not seen in the mainstream for years to come: integrated stem & steerer, extra wide BB shell with press fit bearings, externally butted square tubing, asymetrical rear triangle etc.

So which other bikes moved the game on by as big a margin?

I'd say the Mountain Cycle San andreas was a first in a number of areas especially in light of what else was available at the time.

SC Chameleon or Spooky Metalhead (can't remember which came first).

GT LTS was on of the first full suspension bikes that worked pretty well. Wasn't a proflex and wasn't URT.
(only it was a pain to service all those bushings and bearings)

+1 on Mountain Cycles. i remember when i worked in teh bike shop there was one of their disc brakes and it was all i wanted for a good 12 months

Marin Rift Zone, brought full suss to the masses instead of it being for the elite

The original Heckler? Or how about the GT LTS?

I think a lot of early 90's cannondale stuff such as the super V and then the Raven showed the way foprwards for quite a few years.

re the Pace:

square tubing…erm it's not as good?
Assymetric rear wheels…good idea IMO, did not catch on!
Was the bb wider? Agree re the Bullseye (not Pace) chainset though IIRC bearing life was worse than HT2?
Leaving the upside down kind-of-aheadset.

I'd say AMP suss bikes which showed (in over the top and useless way) how light FS could be, and perhaps Pro-flex for making affordable suss bikes that worked.

Oh and there's the Cannondale Magic Motorcycle bike, and that Muddy fox with linkd front and rear suss 😉

Orange Sub 5 or Marin Mount Vision converted the first batch of Hard Tailers to full sus?!

Marin Mount Vision range* – the first full-suss bike to be accepted as a general XC-riding bike.

*Beard and sandals optional.

snap!

Not a bike but I'd say the original Marzocchi Bomber suspension fork.
Before that everything was elastomer, maybe with an oil damping cartridge but basically little lumps of rubber. Then Marzocchi came along with a coil sprung, open bath fork with massively longer travel than anything else around (4" compared to the usual 2.5") and suddenly the elastomer was dead and fork development stepped up several gears at once.

If I had to pick a bike I'd say probably one of the early Cannondale DH bikes – so far ahead of it's time with it's integrated BB, press fit cranks, triple clamp forks and gearbox shifting that it never took off.

Specialized FSR

Amp Horst link/macpherson strut rear ends, later fsr horsts due to being the most enduring rear suspension design, barring the single pivot of course.

Intense M1. A huge leap forward in dh bikes

personally speaking, that was a move in the right direction

Rover Safety bicycle 1885

My thoughts have already been said here.

The San Andreas was the first modern 'big bike'. Update the angles a bit and fit new kit and it wouldn't look out of place on a modern DH course.

The Marin Mount Vision, with Paul Lazenby on board, made a lot more people start to look at suspension seriously – as something we could all ride as opposed to it being a passing fad, or only any good for DHers.

Couldn't agree more about the San Andreas. I actually got to ride a prototype of one in the summer of 1991 in California. The guy who set up the company was also the business partner of a bike shop just north of San Diego where I ended up buying a Bridgestone MB-0 from. I got matey with the owner and he and this chap who set up San Andreas went for a ride in the canyons north of SD, him on this amazing looking full suss bike with upside down forks, disk brakes and straight pull spokes.

IMO the last bike paradigm shift was pneumatic tyres. Everything else is just static.

'85 Rockhopper. It was way better than the then best selling Saracen Conquest and a whole lot cheaper than a Stumpjumper.

I had the first one in the country too, so very exclusive for about a week.

I remember seeing a custom full suss in '88 built by Highpath Engineering. He insisted full suss was faster for XC. Oh how we laughed on our racey long stem ridgids.

The Marin Mount Vision, with Paul Lazenby on board, made a lot more people start to look at suspension seriously – as something we could all ride as opposed to it being a passing fad, or only any good for DHers.

For a long time – including his championship winning ride – he effectively rode it with the rear suspension permanently locked out 😉

A Pathologist in Edinburgh, Dr Death we knew him as had a Highpath around 87-88. It had drum brakes and aomething like a 5 speed Sturmey Archer hub and a 5 speed cassette. It also had a super high BB with an integreated bash guard. It was pretty trick at the time.

Charlie Cunningham has to have been one of the most innovative guys in the mtb industry

http://www.cunninghambikes.com/innovation.html

My personal interest has always been more in the DH, Jumpy, Gnarr side of things, lets be honest it’s the sexier side of MTBs and hence I think many of the paradigm formers come from that side of the sport…

Thus Off the top of my noggin and in no particular order:

Original Stumpy for quite obvious reasons…

Original Joe Murray period Kona steel frames, arguably the true precursor to all of the current steel trail frames; with its geometry and ride…

M1 – In the late 90s the most desirable DH bike available, re-badged by many teams, designed with a purpose, to race Downhill… The interest in it probably spurred many manufacturers on to design their own DH frames, hence the number of DH products available today…

Original Turner Burner – Horst linked, arguably Turner saw the possibilities for the Horst link for DH use before Intense and Specialized – also re-badged by a few teams for DH use… could also be argued that it was the first “All mountain bike” before the concept really existed..

Honda RN01 – unattainable, shrouded in mystery and rumours, gave the Drones a massive Hard on for Gearbox equipped DH bikes (weather they are of any true benefit or not), while you may not be able to ride one or anything directly derived from it at present I think it really shows the “factory” approach to developing a race bike at it’s peak, and it will have made a few people dream about the possibilities for what can be done technologically on an MTB…

Pace RC100 and 200 not just for asymmetrical rear ends square tubes, composite tubes, upside down headsets, etc but for their less traditional approach, they brought ideas and technologies from other industries to bear on MTBs, at a time when most bikes were constructed using “traditional” round section tube sets” they used some modern technology and made outside the box ideas seem sexier, your modern hydro formed whirly gig frame owes some of it’s lineage to pace…

DMR trailstar – contentious one perhaps but for about 15 years it’s been the basic benchmark in modestly priced hard hitting steel HT frames, dirt jumping, 4X racing, trail riding, XC jaunts it can be configured to do just about everything, many people who are in to MTBs will have owned at least one in their time, and enjoyed riding it…

Giant ATX1 – probably the first DH bike from a Major manufacturer that people really wanted to own…

Kona Stinky – another contentious one, basically though it provided affordable bounce for those that wanted to try a bit of sprung Gnarr, in many ways the Trailstar of FS bikes…

Bighit – for the same reasons as the Stinky…

San Andreas – for similar reasons to pace; they brought new ideas and technologies to bike manufacture, also made DH racing a realisable possibility…

GT RTS – an early attempt to tackle pedal bob, quite a good idea really, a widely available frame which saw use for both XC and DH racing…

Outland VPP – didn’t make a massive impact itself, but the number of bikes derived from the VPP suspension design is now almost ludicrous.

integrated stem & steerer

Thankfully that was one that quietly went away and died in a corner.

Personally I don't think the Pace did much apart from a few wild ideas that never caught on (you can't say it was a paradigm shift otherwise we'd all be riding square tubed fixed stem mounts).

S'pose it's claim to fame was it brought the idea to UK that you could drop a couple of grand on a mountain bike and probably coined the phrase "How much? You could buy a car for that".

what cokeea said

paradigm shift could be a little strong but like cookea and the DMR trailstar above I was thinking the Santa Cruz Chameleon.

it was the first BMX. mtbs are still way behind.

I had a GT STS or Plastic Pig as it was know by the guys I rode with back then.

Actually had 2 as the first one broke when the carbon tubes split from the alloy head tube!

Activator.

cookeaa, are we to take it that a paradigm shift is the same thing as an incremental change ? To me it would be something like the adoption of mobile phones or riding bikes off road, not a different shaped tube…

By paradigm shift I meant something that was just so far ahead, either in the right or the wrong direction, of what else was available at the time.

The Pace RC100 might not represent the direction we ended up taking but it was so far out of the box as to be almost alien.

The San Andreas was a paradigm shift for using upside down forks (not that radical as they are standard design feature in the motobike world) but because of that simple feature, we saw the first use of disc brakes (V-brakes didn't work with the fork design).

The Honda is another one and I would say the Nicolai gear box bikes are in the same category. Not that I am biassed towards Nicolai of course 😉

the bikes cokea mentions are ones that changed the way mtbs were ridden thus evolving the sport

so yeah id say paradignm shift

apart from maybe the pace which is just like a concept car except it actually got made

I'll agree some of the bikes I mentioned were less a "Paradigm Shift" as a marker for points over the last 20 odd years where mountain biking (a relatively young sport) has shown significant changes either in the technologies used the types of riding and the attitudes to both…

I stand by the idea that pace marked a change I'm not necessarily saying the bikes marked a peak in bicycle technology but look at it this way it was an example of a frame constructed from something other than basic round section tubing, now look at a modern big name manufacturers frame nothing fancy say a 4-500 quid Speccy or Trek, there won't be a single tube on it that isn't in some way manipulated to give sections that add something to the structure, I think bikes like pace's opened other manufacturers eyes to the possibilities and made them realise they could do more than just assemble some bits of pipe into triangles…

I did consider putting nicolai down but I'm not really sure if they qualify yet, I know they've been about far longer but I don't think they've had anything like the impact that the Honda did (consider if you will the fact that the empire AP1 is clearly intended to look a bit "Honda-esque") the nicolai Gboxx efforts still seem a bit clunky looking and un-finished to me either a bloody expensive and heavy Rohloff hub in a big box or a few belts and pulleys in an equally massive box, all of them aimed at primarily at descending hills, the Honda's gearbox was sensibly thin and didn't need the whole bike to be built around it, it was an easily removed and serviced drive module I actually think if/when affordable gear boxes for bikes come they will more likely be a mech in a box type configuration as it's logical, lighter and easier to service than some complex, expensive, epicyclic dohicky, and they won't be for DH bikes they'll be for fitting to pretty standard XC/trail HTs (what does the cycle industry sell more of? high price point DH sleds or basic 4" forked HTs for under a grand?)

When I first started riding MTBs in the late 80s there was basically one "Paradigm" (or so it seemed) the bikes seemed to have largely the same layout and purpose, the shift since then has been the broadening of the MTB's use some would say splinter faction forming I would say "MTB" is now simply a coverall term that refers to a large and extremely varied group of people that ride bikes off-road be it XC, trials, DH, FR, SS, 4X, Dirt jumping or freecore-semi-XC-trail dogging they all share common roots and similar philosophies…

03-04 Spesh Enduro raised the bar for FS, & still take some beating now.

inbred.

(actually half-seriously: it did bring SS to the masses and, arguably opened up a mass market for nicheness. Not all paradigm shifts are progressive.)

Not a bike but I'd say the original Marzocchi Bomber suspension fork.
Before that everything was elastomer

Well apart from the ones which had air springs (I believe some of those pre-dated Bombers by a few years 😉 ) – just like lots of forks today. Oh, and of course the earlier forks using coil springs.

The original Brabury Manitou frame: oversize headset, 90mm BB, 145mm dishless rear wheel, box section rear.

Mongoose Amplifier/AMP B3: One of the first FS to actually work and was light weight.