I’m old enough to remember when mountain bikes weren’t mountain bikes. Most kids round us called whatever bikes they’d stuck wide bars and knobbly tires on ‘scramblers’ – because that was the motorbike equivalent. Bigger boys and girls who smoked cigarettes bluffed their way into pubs and scared my flares into a flap called them Bombers. That was the name Raleigh chose for their first beach cruiser-style ‘bully bikes’. In France, sophisticated off-roaders, who probably smoked unfiltered cigarettes and drank wine, called their bikes “Velo Tout Terrain” and for a while “All Terrain Bike” was the go-to phrase for early MTBs in the UK too.
Over in America though, Gary Fisher and Charlie Kelly stuck the name “Mountain Bikes” above the tiny shop they set up to sell their custom ‘clunker’ cruiser bikes to local riders keen to join the ‘Repack Scene’. Just like Gary, the name was over the top for the riding most people did on these new “Fat Tire Flyers”, but it sounded exciting and adventurous. That meant Gary and Charlie were soon selling more bikes than Tom Ritchey could make for them. That inspired other people like Joe Breeze, Scot Nicol, Otis Guy, the Koski Bros, and others to start upscaling their existing clunker production and bigger brands, like Univega and Specialized, to start making ‘mountain bikes’ too. At which point Gary and Charlie realized the lawyer they’d hired to protect the name ‘Mountain Bikes’ had screwed up and soon their brilliant branding became the household name for an entirely new form of mountain biking.
