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Thats kind of the point, what about people who don't just pootle about and actually get somewhere near pushing the design a bit, then konas can show themselves to be lesser than some of the competition
Well interestingly over here I see a lot of kona. All the DHers/freerider rides stinkees but hey maybe the rock garden know as the south Alps is not good enough to push a bike t it's limits.
Kona have always been in advanced to other companies. The first dawg (called the bear) was actually a 'light' stinky 2001 (like the golden one). The second dawg with 130mm of travel was exactly the 2001 godlen stinky. Kona was the first company to produced a dirt/dual HT.
They were the first company to provide factory racers with Ti and risers for XC and so on and so on...
if you compare them to cars for example - you wouldnt pay the price of a new car if you knew that it was exactly the same model the manu had released ten years ago, with the same engine bhp, fuel economy, no abs or air con etc etc when their competitors were releasing much more powerful and more efficient cars for the same price.
At the end of the day it's simply a wheel moving around a pivot. It's not that difficult. Everything else you read is window dressing.
but maybe they should have come up with a design of their own?
Why? Wouldn't that be spending money just for the sake of it? If people like the way they ride then that's good enough, surely? All the better then to spend your R&D budget on new bikes in other areas.
and more importantly geometry that suits your riding
Exactly. No point getting to obsessed with the mechanics of how suspension works. If the only measure of a good bike was how sophisticated its suspension was, we wouldn't be riding around on Orange 5s and Cannondale prophets - both really well loved bikes that get great reviews. The geometry is the main reason I love my Heihei. It just begs to be thrashed like a naughty servant 🙂
I may not be winning races since I'm too fat to climb well - but it gets pushed to the very limits on singletrack and downhill sections in races - and comes back for way more. Which is much more than you can say for most XC race bikes that I've tried.
It's unfair to compare Konas to 10 year old cars because they have been tweaked over the years. The Heihei didn't exist before 2007 or 6, and it was a fairly unique machine when it came out I think. There are a few other short travel XC race FS bikes now I think. A better comparison would be to say VW. Their diesel engine design hadn't changed fundamentally for 10 years or so but they were still good cars that people liked to drive, and that sold well.
I am inclined to give Kona some credit, as yourmothercookssocks does, for the AfricaBike, and also for the Ute.
They used to make fantastic XC hardtails. Then they made some lovely chunky full-sus bikes. Apart from utility bikes though they've made nothing that has wowwed me since about 2004. I'd be perfectly happy with any of their output (I'm not a good rider) in functional terms but I need them to be substantially better value at the moment.
and also for the UteWell you would 🙂
If I had more money and space in the garage, I'd be sorely tempted with a Ute. And a Jake the Snake. And I lust after a PhD too. Maybe a Sutra as well.