Hello,

Well, yes the motorcycle thing was real. After the mountain bike boon of the late 1980s, Cannondale thought that they could build offroad motorcycles. I understand that they were decent motorcycles, but obviously they didn't sell.

Back to bicycles, Cannondale started out building the first successful, welded aluminum, production, road bike frames in the early to mid 1980s (I can't quite remember). They developed some interesting manufacturing techniques to keep the frames straight during the welding process and to keep good material properties near the welds. Prior to Canondale the only production aluminum frames on the market were glued frames like the Alain.

Canondale also got into the mountain bike business at the start of the sport. One of their early (or maybe first) mountain bikes had a 26" front wheel and a 24" rear wheel. The premise was that the bike would climb better with this combination.

How do I know all of this? I worked at a large bicycle shop during the mid 1980s and I bought one of Canondale's mountain bikes (really large discounts for emplooyees). The bike did climb pretty well but it decended like a pig (or was it my technique?).

Thanks.

Cleave