October 6, 2024 The more I research the history of this industry, the more I realize how Dan Empfield has influcened the bike industry as we know it today. Let’s talk about something other than stack & reach, or X&Y, or the fact that he created the first Triathlon-specific bike. I want to speak for a second about how he has always influenced front-end design; if you go back in history, you start to notice that every time a bike manufacturer wanted to go with an integrated headset, he told that individual and or company to go pound sand. He would always give many reasons for the why , but in the end, it would be the simplest reason: because it made it too difficult for the user to adjust the bike position. You would sell someone a bike and they would go get fit and well, instead of changing out a stem or adding some tilt, boom you had to take out the old metal saw and find the super glue.
We can go back and look at the companies that have taken heed of Dan’s advice and those who haven’t. Specialized, Trek, and even Cervelo all had a lot of issues with the lack of adjustability in their proprietary set-ups. All of which were justified by the wind tunnel, tests, and a “sexy-looking” bike. When disc braked bikes started to come out, Trek sort of got it right, Cervelo was 2nd, and the Specialized Shiv missed the mark […]
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