In my time since joining this forum, I haven't seen many Intense, Mountain Cycle or Foes owners (that are overtly obvious from sigs/mynewbike posts/pimpmyride/postyourrigs).

Are there many on this forum? Many you come across on regular rides?

IIRC, I think Pete had a Foes bike.

You will find many more in a more gravity-oriented forum. Also, Mountain Cycle has been in flux for a number of years due to shakeups at Kinesis.

Lastly, they are horrifically EXPENSIVE - - definitely the boutique of the boutique brands that few are going to drop the money for.

He had an Intense.

and I thought the trek fuel ex 9.5 was ridiculous at $6,300

Then again, it hurt when I paid $2,800 for mine, lightly used.

There are a shyte load of Intense bikes on the trails around here as well as Foes (both local companies that make great bikes). Not to many Mountain Cycles but you do see a few but they are usually older models, I have not seen any new ones.

Jenson is selling Intense Spiders now for about 2700-3000. Not bad.

Dminor, what's been going on at Kinesis?

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 (https://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:
https://www.bikeportland.org/wp-conte...%20RELEASE.pdf
https://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.

intense and yeti are nice but overpriced in my opinion

False.

I was mistaken, it was a Foes Fly, I recalled an Intense m5.

nice to know all, thanks.

yeti's are almost commonplace here (Australia). almost as many as c'dales. but I havent seen a single intense or foes on the trail. from photos on local websites it seems even nicolais (although most always in hardtail variety) are more common.

i guess shipping costs and foreign manufacturing might drive it up a little, but still, intense frames are 200-300 more than they should be (in relation to frames of the exact same quality and material) (the 08 intense m3's look hot no matter the price)

My buddy was sponsored by mountain cycles. I see lots of those bikes around town, and if I begin to frequent ridemonkey or mtbr they tend to have a high percentage owners than here.

Personally I have never seen the reason for dropping that much coin, I am not into the boutique side of the industry.

I had an Uzzi SL, cracked the frame a couple of years ago and haven't had the money to buy another one, but I LOVED that frame!