The Dirt 100 is carefully compiled through hours of discussions across our desks in the office, out on the trails on a ride and, of course, in the pub over some pints. The point is, nothing is there by accident and we’re totally confident that we have collated the the best 100 products in mtb.
Of course, there were plenty of products that nearly made it too, the standard of tech gets higher every year and we’ve rarely had more heated discussions than deciding the 2017 list.
However, there are plenty of products that could never have made our coveted list. A number of dead ends that may have seemed revolutionary at the time but leave us scratching our heads now wondering what we were thinking in the first place. Here are just ten of them, prepare to cringe:
Z-torque crank
Can you use a bent crank to break physics? It turns out no, no you can’t. The Z-Torque was supposed to increase your pedalling power by using a longer crank arm bent into a ‘z’ shape but it didn’t take long for the internet to ridicule its inventors for making a secondary-school-level howler in the calculations. What you’re left with is a heavy crank that has less clearance, not ideal.
LeEco smart bike
E-bikes made it into the 100 for the first time this year so we’re far from luddites when it comes to electronics on bikes. However, for us, this is way too far. With a four-inch touch screen, in-built fitness tracking, GPS and its own app, it’s packed with tech – in fact it has more processing power than most tablets. The only thing they’ve forgotten, making an effective mountain bike.
