If your cynicism is that pronounced, I'm either sorry for what life looks like from that perspective, or I at the very least hate to be the one to inform you that engineers at bike brands are not sitting around in design brief meetings discarding the best ideas and saying "let's wait and do that in three years instead". First of all, when a brand decides to re-design a bike, everyone's job depends on doing it as well as they can with the knowledge and tools at hand, because everyone's job depends on the continued financial viability of the company they work for, and there are very few people out there for whom keeping their job isn't the \#1 priority.
Also, even the big brands don't have unlimited design resources. They have to prioritize, and those priorities are set differently, obviously, at different companies. For some it may be the sales team clamoring for a new 150mm trail bike because the current one is no longer competitive (maybe one or two key markets for that brand are powerful enough to always win those arguments) or the advent of a certain new tech may make a compelling case to finally push out a DH bike or an XC race bike when that company hasn't made one for several years. So many variables, none of which is "that idea is too good, let's roll it out slowly, thus rendering our brand less competitive in the short run". Nope.
29er DH bike development was held back by availability of 29er wheels, tires, and forks. This also happens when companies are designing bikes and trying something new. "Do the parts exist to even make this a reality?" In the last few years things have settled down in terms of innovation that required new or different parts to become available but there have always been phases where brands went to OE suppliers to say "we have this idea, but to pull it off, we need you to develop an option that fits the concept" whether that's a fork with 44mm offset or something more elaborate like a long travel fork with the right axle-crown for a 29er and enough torsional rigidity, or a tire in the right size and width with an appropriate casing.
March 25, 2024, 11:41 a.m. - Pete Roggeman
If your cynicism is that pronounced, I'm either sorry for what life looks like from that perspective, or I at the very least hate to be the one to inform you that engineers at bike brands are not sitting around in design brief meetings discarding the best ideas and saying "let's wait and do that in three years instead". First of all, when a brand decides to re-design a bike, everyone's job depends on doing it as well as they can with the knowledge and tools at hand, because everyone's job depends on the continued financial viability of the company they work for, and there are very few people out there for whom keeping their job isn't the \#1 priority. Also, even the big brands don't have unlimited design resources. They have to prioritize, and those priorities are set differently, obviously, at different companies. For some it may be the sales team clamoring for a new 150mm trail bike because the current one is no longer competitive (maybe one or two key markets for that brand are powerful enough to always win those arguments) or the advent of a certain new tech may make a compelling case to finally push out a DH bike or an XC race bike when that company hasn't made one for several years. So many variables, none of which is "that idea is too good, let's roll it out slowly, thus rendering our brand less competitive in the short run". Nope. 29er DH bike development was held back by availability of 29er wheels, tires, and forks. This also happens when companies are designing bikes and trying something new. "Do the parts exist to even make this a reality?" In the last few years things have settled down in terms of innovation that required new or different parts to become available but there have always been phases where brands went to OE suppliers to say "we have this idea, but to pull it off, we need you to develop an option that fits the concept" whether that's a fork with 44mm offset or something more elaborate like a long travel fork with the right axle-crown for a 29er and enough torsional rigidity, or a tire in the right size and width with an appropriate casing.