Why do all the new bikes look broken?

Just looked at the new Canyon bikes featured on Fresh Goods Friday. Normally quiet as a mouse me, but just reached a boiling point and had to get it off my chest. Never owned one but had them on my watch-list for a while…but OMG….Uggg LLeeeeeee. I admit, I’m a bit old school (coz I’m old) though normally happy to embrace new stuff, but what in the world are bike designers thinking? These recent wheel size options are leading to some of the strangest, ugliest bikes I have ever seen. There is a huge wave of designs that look like they have been crashed…right out of the box. Bent top tubes and down tubes, strangely bent rear ends… It’s all wrong. Come on mountain bike manufacturers / designers, can’t you see the Frankenstein bikes you are producing. You are driving me to the Darkside…I can see the blacktop calling.

Mine doesn’t

Form > Function

If they didn’t look like that then they’d look like old bikes and if they looked like old bikes they wouldn’t sell any as no one wants a bike they’ve already got. 😆

Some do – Mondraker as an obvious example. However DMR Bolt, Bird Aeris, Cotic rocket etc all have nice tubes in mostly straight lines.

Bikes need to have distinctive bends and lumps so the kids who obsess over magazines and websites and sick edits, can tell the difference between #EnduroSled1 and #EnduroSled2 when they’ve been photo’s from up/behind a tree/fashionable shrubbery du jour.

Some simple bends I don’t mind, and some things like a curved top tube to increase standover height make sense. But the constipated hyena look of many modern bikes really doesn’t appeal to me either.

Form > Function

It’s more like form following function though.

They’re shaped like that to increase standover height while still providing the frame strength required – and I gather the “just been ridden into a wall” look is a good way to achieve this when using hydroformed alu.

Not so sure in the case of carbon, perhaps they just keep the frame shapes the same for brand continuity?

I don’t find modern road bikes that appealing either. With their steeply raked top tube (it’s a crossbar!) and lots of seat tube they just look like you’ve bought too small a bike.

Horizontal crossbars, you know they look right.

They all tend to look okay from above, the only angle which should really worry you 🙂

Just in case you haven’t already seen it OP – apologies to all that have!

A new, not looking broken bike. Stay away from the darkside…

2016-05-10_08-50-24 by davetheblade[/url], on Flickr

You really should have put that stray gravel back.

My new bike doesn’t look broken. It looks like a bike.