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All Terrain Bicycle




The French Velo Cross Club Parisien (VCCP) comprised about twenty young bicyclists from the outskirts of Paris who between 1951 and 1956 developed a sport that was remarkably akin to present-day mountain biking.

Mountain biking started to evolve in the late 1960s and early 1970s. At the time, there was no such thing as a mountain bike. The earliest ancestors of modern mountain bikes were based around frames from road cruisers such as those made by Schwinn. Riders used balloon tired beach cruisers and modified them with gears and motocross style handlebars. They would bomb (ride fast) down mountain fireroads causing the hub brake to burn the grease inside, requiring the riders to repack the bearings. These were called "repack races" and triggered the first innovations in mountain bike technology as well as the initial interest of the public. The sport originated in the U.S. state of California, on Marin county's famous mountain, Mount Tamalpais.



It wasn't until the late 1970s and early 1980s that road bicycle companies started to manufacture mountain bicycles using high-tech lightweight materials. Gary Fisher is normally credited with introducing the first purpose-built mountain bike in 1979. The designs were basically road bicycle frames with a wider frame and fork to allow for a wider tire. The handlebars were also different in that they were a straight, transverse-mounted handlebar, rather than the dropped, curved handlebars that are typically installed on road racing bicycles. Also, some of the parts on early production mountain bicycles were taken from the BMX bicycle. The first mass-produced mountain bikes were produced by Specialized and were configured with 15 gears.