The first time I considered this issue was when AMajor brought it up in his test of the Kona Satori which bumped up the ESTA (good!) but didn't add a commensurate amount of Reach to keep the cockpit the right size (less good!).
[https://nsmb.com/articles/2018-kona-satori-dl/](https://nsmb.com/articles/2018-kona-satori-dl/)
It doesn't take a lot of consideration to realize that if you steepen the ESTA you'll lose a bunch of ETT and will need to add that cockpit space back as Reach. And once the rider is that far forward a slacker head angle and shorter stem make a lot more sense and doesn't result in floppy steering as it would on a bike where the rider is positioned rearwards.
This, like a lot of other simple math, is really hard for bike designers to get their heads around. Or maybe designers are accommodating peoples' general inability to consider the system and just focus on a single number: Reach. People look at newer bikes' Reach numbers without considering the system and assume the bikes just got really long (because the new Reach number is much bigger than the Reach number from their current bike with a 74' ESTA).
July 20, 2021, 3:18 p.m. - Cr4w
The first time I considered this issue was when AMajor brought it up in his test of the Kona Satori which bumped up the ESTA (good!) but didn't add a commensurate amount of Reach to keep the cockpit the right size (less good!). [https://nsmb.com/articles/2018-kona-satori-dl/](https://nsmb.com/articles/2018-kona-satori-dl/) It doesn't take a lot of consideration to realize that if you steepen the ESTA you'll lose a bunch of ETT and will need to add that cockpit space back as Reach. And once the rider is that far forward a slacker head angle and shorter stem make a lot more sense and doesn't result in floppy steering as it would on a bike where the rider is positioned rearwards. This, like a lot of other simple math, is really hard for bike designers to get their heads around. Or maybe designers are accommodating peoples' general inability to consider the system and just focus on a single number: Reach. People look at newer bikes' Reach numbers without considering the system and assume the bikes just got really long (because the new Reach number is much bigger than the Reach number from their current bike with a 74' ESTA).