This is monumental. 2000/2001 was a dark time during which GT bikes was shuttered. Basically everything wrong with cycling was on full display. They were for the longest time the premier bikes to own and ride. Better yet they were impossible to kill designs of sheer genius that translated into acquiring skills modern bikes substitute for. At prices your first job could make happen.
As alluded to above, this ended very badly. Eventually the “brand” was bought by the fine people who stock Walmart with ill conceived pig metal that resembles a bike. Grim stuff, how the mighty had fallen. Somehow things improved a bit and they started making mtb’s using a revised full suspension design that didn’t exactly bend the world over it’s knee in a way it had done in the past.
This went on for years, being a minor player that capitalized off the amount of money being invested on machinery and training in Asia. About the time frames got very selfsame, if not outright identical, the company’s lot had improved to where they weren’t hated as much for what they no longer were. Mostly by people new to the sport avoiding buying cREDiBULLity to match their flatbrim hat and dirthole ethics. Respectable enough if lacking GARY TURNER and his team designing, racing, and destroying (other brands) bikes on a level that will not be paralleled.
You cannot overstate the contribution to BMX and mountain biking as we currently know it. Somehow Gary Turner is back at the brand he started and this bodes extremely well for anyone who actually enjoys riding more than posing next to a $80K brotruck littered with $20K bikes on hipstersham.