Anyone catch this item from Riv? I saw it a while back but it came up again in a forum thread.
Basically, GP is asking 8 of the faithful to pony up 4300 smack for a proof of concept bike. But nobody gets much of a clue of what it is until it is delivered. This is a rather novel approach to budgeting for R&D and it has taken a right proper pummeling in various blogs and forums.
Here at Fuji Otaku we normally consider it a grave and objective moral wrong not to shoot every fish in the barrel. But in this instance we're gonna make an exception and hold our fire because of the one issue that hasn't been thoroughly chewed over, derided, horsewhipped, etc, by the commentariat in this affair.
That is, what is the mystery cycle? Please bear with me, as I'm doing all I can to not push the big red, tweedy, lugged (and frequently used!) Riv cheap shot button.
Riv's already done mixtes, MTB, club racer, fixie/single speed, and some other stuff. Tricycles and unicycles seem out for the U.S. market, although, interestingly enough, unicycles are quite popular in Japan, especially with the young ladies. Quite often when I pick up my son from school I'll get mobbed by a pack of Japanese first grade girls on unicycles peppering me with attempted English.
My guess is a dedicated internal gear hub bike - the IGH stuff, especially with the new Alfine 11 hub, is getting too big to ignore for trendsetters and fits into the Riv sensible cycling/gizmo-lust story.
Any other guesses out there?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
At first i thought cyclocross. But from the blog it looks like they're building....
a hybrid?
Maybe hybrid frame geometry, but I'm still thinking that it will be configured for a gear hub.
If you read the small print, they mention that there will be no provision for a front derailleur.
So one chainring up front. And they've done single speed/fixie.
Could be a fixed freestyle bike, but im not really sure anyone would pay 4300 for a bike they are gonna throw down a stairwell XD
Post a Comment