The car world has resto-mods and even born again classics, and now so too does the mountain bike world.
There are many many mountain bikes from the past that I still lust after. Now and then I’ll even scroll the classifieds to see if I can find something from the past, but even when I do I’ll rarely pull the trigger. As much as I love the bikes from the early years of mountain biking, with their out of the box design choices and ideas, I know deep down in my heart that it would be a very pretty, yet expensive ornament.
As pretty as a polished AMP full suspension bike with a matching linkage fork might be, it’s not going to be anywhere near as good as a modern bike, likely not even as good as the current crop of gravel bikes on the market.
What someone needs to do is to take the aesthetics of old bikes then mix in modern geometry, features and standards. Just imagine how cool an Alpinestar Ti Mega would be in mullet configuration and modern geo!
Well, imagine no more has Tora Cycles has made just the retro mashup. Taking inspiration from the Ti Mega, or Al Mega if you weren’t flash with your cash, this love letter to retro looks as rad as the original only it should huck like a hardtail should.
Rather than aluminium or Titanium, the Tora version is built with T45 steel tubing and is built around a 140mm travel fork. Tora has even added the ultimate 2021 must have to their vision of the Alpinestar, a mullet rear wheel!
In addition to bringing retro hardtails back to life, Tora Cycles also likes to build steel downhill bikes inspired by Brooklyn Machine Works. Check out their Instagram for more, and if you like the look of this also check out Mullet Cycles hardtail, possibly inspired by the same hardtail.