The way I pieced it together, there was a big shakeup at Kinesis USA & Mountain Cycle a year or more ago that involved Kinesis selling off Mountain Cycle to a group of Taiwan investors and splitting off Kinesis USA from Kinesis Taiwan. But not before Michael Chen (Kinesis USA president) laid off most of the Portland staff of Mountain Cycle citing that the management basically ran the brand into the ground by straying from its downhilling/freeriding core customer base.

In the meantime, Specialized's lawyers got into it hot and heavy around Stumpjumper-anniversary time in some brand-protection pissiness with Kinesis/MC - - over MC's plan to release a bike named the Stumptown. Never mind that Stumptown was a nickname for Portland 150 years before the Stumpjumper was a gleam in Mike Sinyard's eye. [While I'm on that subject, the Bothell Stumpjumpers Motorcycle Club should sue Specialized for name infringement by associating a two-wheeled conveyance with the name Stumpjumper when the club was already doing that more than ten years before. I mean if we're going to get all lawyerly about this . . . .]

Mountain Cycle was to be headed up by Doug Stuart, former CEO of Full Speed Ahead (FSA); but that didn't last long, because Stuart now heads up Corsair Bikes (http://www.allbusiness.com/retail-tr...4150952-1.html watch this company - -they've got some cool stuff).

Here are some links at BikePortland that shed a bit more light:
http://www.bikeportland.org/wp-conte...%20RELEASE.pdf
http://bikeportland.org/2006/03/31/m...ues-statement/


Ahhh . . . Southern California. I used to love to look at the classifieds in the back of Cycle News; drool at all those tricked-out, near-works rockets for sale - - things most of the rest of us mortals in other parts of the country only ever saw a handful of.