Kona’s - best year for frame?

[bold stelvis]

Obviously down to personal preference but for me 94 to 96 had the best colours and graphics
'97 saw the move to the more 'comic sans'-seque, "Hawaiian" styled graphics which personally I am not a big fan of.
the earlier ones are growing on me though - ie 90-91 era

I think the mid to late 90s ones are generally a bit lighter and have slightly more extreme stretched out geo - late 80's and early 90s a little more relaxed with shorter Top tubes

 

[al-onestare]

Why was Kona so late to the suspension game? I got my first suspension bike in 92 (what a mistake that purchase was).

To be fair, they weren't. They'd had their fingers burned with the Z-link/Futureshock in 91/92, kinda echoing the point of your mistake

Once Rock-Shox came along a little later and initially dominated the mass-market, Kona started to fit them as an option in 1993 through to 1994 when the geometry was adjusted to cope with the increased travel.

Kona were known and were bold enough to say it, to stick with tried and tested designs and components. Using thumb-shifters a couple of years after everyone was using rapidfire/bar shifters.

 

[minor_LEGEND]

Rock Shox were on the market in 89/90 with the original RS1 fork. There was the Kona branded Future Shock, the leading link Project 2 inspired fork carrying Joe Murrays name but Kona got behind Marzocchi for original equipment as a first fork option iirc. Was that in 93 or 94?

I would imagine Kona thought it wiser to leave fork choice up to the owner rather than risk speccing something that could fall out of popularity in the marketplace. As said above they didn't really see any return on the investment into the Future Shock offering. Knowing how most buyers of MTB's like to modify their own bikes plus this would help keep the bikes within a certain price point.

 

[al-onestare]

As said above they didn't really see any return on the investment into the Future Shock offering.

To be clear, the Futureshock was a horrible design, a mistake, and quickly recalled for safety issues