Most Desirable Brand of 2024: Atherton Bikes

The Athertons – British mountain biking royalty – yet managing to deliver great bikes for every day riders.

Do they really though? I mean I think the carbon ones in particularly look amazing and I’d love to ride one, but as an owner, I think I’d suffer from brand-induced imposter syndrome. I suspect the bike would be laughing at me behind my back and ridiculing my ‘average mountain biker’ riding.

Don’t get me wrong, they look like brilliant bikes and I think I voted for them as ‘most desirable brand’, but I’m not entirely convinced they’re catering for ‘every-day riders’ as I know them.

When was the last time anyone saw an actual Atherton bike in the wild, ie: outside of a bike park? Genuinely curious, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in the Peak.

They’ve probably made a tiny proportion of what the major brands put out (still only in the hundreds worldwide I think?), for every reason under the sun, just because you haven’t seen them out where you ride, doesn’t mean they aren’t great bikes…

If you read my post, I said I’m sure they are brilliant bikes and very desirable. I was just wondering if there are many of them about, which is quite different from suggesting that they’re not ‘great bikes’ because I haven’t seen one on my local trails.

I guess I was also wondering whether they’re mostly bike park bikes, or at least bought as such.

I live not that far away from them and though having ridden Ibis for the past 15 years (currently on a Ripley v3 LS), I would jump to a A130 to see what the DW6 was like.  Someone I know has a A150 and apparently it climbs like a goat and descends like nothing else.  Need to win the lottery first though!

was just wondering if there are many of them about,

No, as they haven made many, compared to most. There’s a waiting list though, I think.

TBF to the author, I suspect he means keen riders of mediocre ability – not your mate at work who pops to a trail centre a few times a year.

The copy is a bit overheated though, and I may be wrong. Bike journos can be a bit prone to assuming everyone else earns loads more than them.

I have one (an A130), and everything about the bike, the manufacturing, the service and the ride quality are brilliant. And they are family owned and doing it all in the UK. That to me ticks all of the boxes of desirability. Price isn’t so much a factor of desirability. The award isn’t ‘Affordable’ or ‘Budget’, it is ‘Desirable’. I am not saying that price isn’t a factor in making a purchase, but I don’t think it is relevant to desirability. There are lots of things in life that I can’t afford or don’t even have a value but I still rate as desirable.

And if price does come into it, at least talk about value for money. Considering some of the competition are producing huge quantities of bikes in 3 or 4 sizes in Asia, I consider a bespoke UK made product for less money to be pretty good value for money.

Congratulations to all involved at Atherton. Let’s just leave it at that.

I shall keep a voyeuristic eye open on my local rides 🙂

Otherwise, a lot of this is subjective. I do wonder about the relationship between affordability and desirability. I know that something can be both affordable and desirable, but there’s also, I think, a bit of unaffordability/exclusivity/cachet being part of desirability.

Years ago, when I road-tested motorbikes for a living, I used to lust after the Ducati 851 / 888 as a sort of unattainable object of desire. I actively avoided riding one to avoid disillusionment. When I actually did get to try one – half against my will – I was massively disappointed. It felt horribly clunky and agricultural, dreams/illusions shattered etc. Similarly the idea of Harleys was, ime anyway, a lot better than the reality. The RC30 was a massively better bike fwiw.

Anyway, I like the idea of the Atherton bike as something similarly unattainable, which in a way is what makes it desirable – at least in part. And oddly I also like the idea that it would be far too much bike for me to credibly ride. Colour me a bike odd I guess.

TBH it would be nice to see more folk (especially in the media) calling out the cost of bikes.

My thought would be that the industry isn’t big enough for the cycling media to be i dependent of the trade itself, so it’s a perpetuating scratch each others back thing.

Ive never seen an Atherton bike anywhere apart of in adverts on on the telly box