Whyte Bikes
Our first breakthrough bike (the PRST-1) rewrote the rules. And we continue in that spirit; relentlessly seeking and developing the next big performance advantages with pioneering innovations that move you to ride better, feel better and do better.
Performance by design
For mountain biking, that is Jon Whyte. And, to really understand our bikes, you need to understand him – the obsessive, maverick, lateral thinking design engineer. Someone for whom building bikes was part science, part instinct – but all emotion.
Before bikes, there was the hyper-competitive engineering environment of Formula 1 (F1) – designing the suspension system that propelled the underdog Benetton team, driven by a young Michael Schumacher, to the 1994 World Championship.
Dedicated follower of passion
But there were always bikes too. F1 podiums were great but Jon had mud flowing through his veins. He really got his kicks mountain biking at the weekends, and that's where he soon reached the conclusion that the big manufacturers weren’t doing a very good job on full suspension bikes.
So he did what all great engineers do. He went a different direction and carved his own path. Striving for the same high-performance as F1, he started developing systems that would work on all terrain, any incline, for any rider. His single-pivot Marin Mount Vision powered Paul Lasenby to the first ever UK Pro-Elite cross country (XC) national points series race win for a full suspension bike in 1997. In doing so, it tore up the mountain bike design rule book and proved that full suspension was the future.
Daring to dare
Encouraged by that success, in 1999 the Whyte brand was launched, allowing Jon and his fledgling team to push the designs even further – with radical bikes like the PRST-1 and E5. The PRST-1 name came from the visually challenged but unstoppable robot dog ‘Preston’ from Aardman Animation’s Wallace and Gromit 1995 short film A Close Shave.
There’s no doubt that this machine divided opinion, but its unique linkage system could beat most obstacles and produced ride dynamics that gave riders a completely new level of confidence out on the trails. Thousands were sold, and they put huge grins of satisfaction across as many faces.