Top 5 Mountain Biking companies ever.

Curveking

Dirt Disciple
5 Brands that changed Mountain Biking.

My List

Breezer
Bontrager
Muddy Fox
RockShox
Gary Fisher

What 5 Brands would you choose?
 
Specialized - sheer ubiquity. Always a contender.
Pace - very forward looking back in the day
Muddy Fox - very visible in the boom of the late 80s
Cannondale - full suspension/lefty fork
Shimano - Used to hate their ubiquity, but no doubting their commitment to innovation
 
Re:

Good thread. Here's mine, purely from my own perspective:

Shimano
Rock Shox
Cannondale
Saracen
Trek
 
Cannondale - fat aluminium tubes!
Kona - Sloping top tube and straight forks (others were first but not as widely available)
GT - triple triangle! (a design that had been around donkeys but GT made their own)
Klein - paint jobs!
Orange - for keeping the British End up!

Rock Shox - Suspension that sort of worked
SRAM - they own everything
Shimano - They are everywhere
Suntour - for not being Shimano
Campagnolo - MTBs' finest 5 minutes of pomp
 
Re:

Dia-compe
Shimano/Suntour/SRAM (counts as two)
Giant
Mountain Bike

Dia-compe had their hand in everything, made the first rockshox, aheadsets, and people rebranded many of their parts.

The big three Groupset companies, without them, and all three, thing would not have kept evolving and buying ideas from others and commercialising them.


Giant pioneered and brought to market many things, even if they are just Giant.
Trek are probably up there with them in that respect.

Mountain Bike, well just because...

Many others can go on there

Araya, if you ever look at their bike catalogues, they have every style bike you will have seen back in the day, pioneers of commercial Aluminium bikes too.

Mavic, brought 'The Wheel' as a whole to be a thing for MTBs, but we're getting out of retro or near enough.
 
Tange: steel which is light/affordable and reliable. Oh, and comfy!

Ritchey: Mechanical expertise, founding father of MTB and still cool after all these years...

Breezer: founding father, finest steel incarnation of the classic rigid MTBs

Shimano: well, the M730, M900 & M950 stuff are still to be reckoned with

Marin: providing dependable retro machines for the people (even the low-category ones are worth saving and value for money)
 
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