Back in the day when there were steel road bikes or other steel road bikes, manufacturers had few ways to differentiate their bike from another. Hetchins had curly stays, others had fancy lugs or different seat stay clusters. Sometimes that's all these funky suspension designs are is a way to differentiate one bike from another. But it is hard to tell the gimmick from the innovation at times. You want your bike designer to think and design outside the box and test and test and test with prototypes on lots of terrain. I have the impression that this Polygon/Marin bike represents that. I am less impressed by bikes that have these super steep seat angles. And there seems to be a lot of follow the leader with that too. I think that steep SA thing is so that those that pay too much attention to wheelbase can select the shortest wheel base they can. Kind of like a weight weenie will weigh ten of the same saddles and buy the one that is two grams lighter. Seems so weird, people want the short wheelbase for agility and the slackest head angle for stability. Make up your mind folks. Then because the chainstays are too short you need to crank that seat tube way forward so your butt isn't perched over the back end. I don't get it.
May 5, 2017, 2:12 p.m. - Andy Eunson
Back in the day when there were steel road bikes or other steel road bikes, manufacturers had few ways to differentiate their bike from another. Hetchins had curly stays, others had fancy lugs or different seat stay clusters. Sometimes that's all these funky suspension designs are is a way to differentiate one bike from another. But it is hard to tell the gimmick from the innovation at times. You want your bike designer to think and design outside the box and test and test and test with prototypes on lots of terrain. I have the impression that this Polygon/Marin bike represents that. I am less impressed by bikes that have these super steep seat angles. And there seems to be a lot of follow the leader with that too. I think that steep SA thing is so that those that pay too much attention to wheelbase can select the shortest wheel base they can. Kind of like a weight weenie will weigh ten of the same saddles and buy the one that is two grams lighter. Seems so weird, people want the short wheelbase for agility and the slackest head angle for stability. Make up your mind folks. Then because the chainstays are too short you need to crank that seat tube way forward so your butt isn't perched over the back end. I don't get it.