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I love early mountain bikes and all terrain bikes, in particular those from the early 1980's to the mid 1990's, and the reason is quite simple, the best of those bikes are peak bike, they may not necessarily be the absolute best bike for any one particular role, for example technical downhill riding or road racing, but they do excel in pretty much any role you wish to name. They really are Jack of all trades.
The frames in particular, because they came into being when bikes were all about road racing or BMX there's this wonderful blend of cutting edge materials and technology fused with fun and innovation, the sport of mountain biking was a relatively new phenomenon and it exploded into the mainstream before the industry was ready, so you had all these little workshops trying out new and interesting ideas, I don't think cycling ever had a time like it in terms of pure invention and revolution.
Some of the bikes from that era are truly works of art, not only aesthetically either, no, the beauty comes from the balance betaeen form and function. As bright creative monds raced to express what they thought a mountain bike should be, and as the established component manufacturers too funnelled massive amounts into R&D budgets and tiny garden shed genii churned out incredible pieces of art an entire industry was transformed, it got to the point where in the mid 1990's mountain bikes were pretty much the most common and popular bikes around the world., eclipsing road racers and BMX combined.
Picrel is just one example, a master frame builder working with riders and cistom component manufacturers in an effort to perfect the machine, like other design classics it looks great because it is great, there's nothing showy about it, they didn't approach the design process thinking about how it's going to look, they were interested only in performance and the results by default delivered a thing of visual splendour.
