Bravin Neff

I’m quickly outgrowing my Cannondale Quick 5. It’s a blast of a bike, and I’ve already put several hundred miles on it the last few weeks. But it’s a little too big, plus I’m jonesing for better hardware. My homework reveals hybrids can have what seems like a road orientation/legacy or a mountain one (please don’t suggest a suspension bike).

Here are some examples. Tell me if you’re picking up what I'm seeing:

Giant Road Hybrid = Rapid, Mountain Hybrid = Escape or Seek.
Jamis Road Hybrid = Allegro, Mountain Hybrid = Coda
…some others.
I can’t make heads or tails where these fall: Specialized Sirrus (roadey?), Cannondale Quick (mountainey?), Trek FX (in betweeney?).

That Novara Express is totally a Road Hybrid. Sat on it, positioning felt great.

What do you favor? Do you even think along these lines?

Wanderer

Sirrus and FX are road Hybrids, Crosstrail and 7200, are mountain hybrids

corwin1968

I'm with you on this line of thinking. The lower level Trek FX bikes are more mountain oriented and they become more road oriented as you go up the line. I'm not too familiar with other brands of hybrids.

I've ridden a 1995 Trek Multitrack, a Trek 7.2 FX and now a Handsome Devil. The Multitrack was definately a mountain oriented bike, as were many (most?) of the original hybrids. The 7.2 FX was more roadie than the Multitrack but still mountain-ish in my opinion. The Handsome Devil is a road-based hybrid without question.

My primary consideration for classifying a hybrid as "mountain" or "road" largely boils down to frame geometry. Components don't make a bit of difference to me. My Multitrack and the 7.2 FX both had mountain bike front-ends in that their head tube angles were pretty slack (71.5 degrees) and the Multitrack at least had a fairly low-rake fork, giving it extremely high trail (74mm) which makes a front-end very stable....a prime characteristic of mountain bikes. They also had fairly high bottom brackets for ground clearance....again, an MTB trait.

The Handsome Devil, on the other hand, has a 73 degree head tube and a 45mm rake fork which gives a trail measurement of about 60mm....right in road bike territory. This results in a front-end that is more on the responsive side than most MTB's. The bottom bracket is also lower to the ground, resulting in more stability but lessening ground clearance....another road bike trait.

I built up my Devil with MTB components but I still consider it a "road" hybrid.

deerfly

As to the Cannondale Quick series, it depends on which ones you are talking about. They have a Quick CX series which is definitely offroad oriented. Then there is the Quick SL3, 2 and 1. All are for the road. I own the SL2 and it is very road oriented. The Quick 6, 5 and 4 are somewhere in between.

xoxoxoxoLive

I can speak for the Sirrus, & Trek's FX. As they go up in price, they lean more towards the Road. And the Sirrus's top model, The limited Edition, is totally road, as is with Treks 7.7 FX.

Bravin Neff

Thanks for the reply, but wow: I have more homework to do.

Astrozombie

Mountain so you can be more "all-terrain" roadie

kaliayev

Not real sure about the geo of the 95 Multitracks, but the first Multitracks (90-93) had the same geo as Trek's touring 520 frame.