I know it’s a bit of a cliche but are you saying wheelbase and (to a lesser extent) standover height have no bearing on how a bike handles?
I entirely agree, I fell for that line too, but bigger bikes are faster. I’ve taken a BMX round a trail center before, you can’t argue aginst BMX being the best handling bikes, but in terms of corner speed it’s actualy really slow.
That and the bigger bikes have a lot more space over the top tube to move arround in, what’s the point of huge standover clerance, if the bars are so close to your hips that you can’t actualy shift your weight foreward (assuming the bars are an equal distance behind the front wheel on all sizes, so weighting the front wheel is actualy function of how far you can get from the rear wheel).
That’s the one reason I haven’t bought a ‘5’, they don’t fit me, a 20″ felt OK (could actualy be longer), but I can happily ride a 17″ seatube and a reverb post so I’m losing all that room!
Really want to learn to braze and find an old 5 swingarm……..