Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
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Cannondale President Joe Nlontgomerv STORY PHOTOS By By "It's not all bad to not have the experience. This is CHRIS JONNUM what happened when we started making aluminum bikes. We tried a lot of things, just because we didn't CHRIS WILLIAMS/CANNONDALE est you think that Cannondale is in over its head with its ambition to become a major player in the motorcycle industry, you should consider that this goal is merely a step along a path to greater glories in the plans of company creator and president Joe Montgomery. The down-to-earth dapper dresser, who commutes back and forth between Cannondale's Massachusetts and Pennsylvania facilities in his own plane, sees the motorcycle market as the focus for his company this decade. The '90s were for bicycles, and in another 10 to 15 years - after which he expects to have become a major player in the motorcycle industry - he talks of entering the automobile industry. And after that? "I'd like to build airplanes," Montgomery says with a completely straight face. We sat down with Montgomery in his company's Bedford, Pennsylvania, motorcycle plant, along with his son Scott Montgomery and press-relations gurus Tom Armstrong and Bill Ruddell. Here's what they had to say: Three years into the motorcycle program, how would you assess Cannondale's entry into the market? Joe Montgomery: "Well, we obviously made a lot of mistakes. Most of them, I . think, revolve around the engine and the engine program. We had two different consultants that we used and, in hindsight, we should have done like we do everything. We still would have made a lot of mistakes - we always make a lot of mistakes - but we would have gotten through the mistakes faster. The leaming curve would have been fester. We had the core technologies of aluminum and suspension. We knew how to do that, and we really have had the frame and suspension done - if we've been in this thing three years - for two and a half years [laughs). But it was the engine, and that was a whole new thing for us. And we thought, 'Well, we'd better go outside and get some help.' And I think we should have got some help, but I think what we should have done was done it inside and brought some consulting people in to help us. Then we would have stumbled and fallen faster and sooner and more often, and gotten up quicker, and we would have been way ahead of where we were. "We finally did bring it in-house, and that's when it finally began to get fixed. Because we didn't have a lot of engine experience, but we didn't have a lot of experience with aluminum when we started making [bicycles], either. We did it three or four times the wrong way before we finally figured out the right way, but we figured it out. We have figured [engines] out now, but it took us longer because we tried to do it in a more rational way, and sometimes the irrational approach is the better one. know any better, and a bunch of them didn't work. But a whole bunch of them did work. The same has been true of this project. As soon as we brought it inhouse, we started doing a lot of things: We really learned dyno technology, and how to apply that, and how to interpret the information. We've gotten very sophisticated in the use of tRat. We didn't have our a pause, ' ... when it works.' Well, a lot of people, I think, really liked the [motorcycle], but it just didn't have durability and was not robust. And so we said, 'Okay,' and took our licks from a number of people (laughs], and we brought it back, and now, I think we've got it between the ditches. I think we've got it fixed. The other thing that I really like about having brought it in-house, is now we have aluminum technology, and we have suspension technology, and I think we have a damned good core understanding of technology in engines. And we already know things, like 'Oh, that's the way you do thatl' So the product just keeps getting better, and that's very much in the Cannondale tradition. And it will just keep getting better." Were you always sure you wanted to have a proprietary engine? J.M.: "When we started out, we were going to buy an engine. The problem is, trying to buy one that gave us the weight and power and format that allowed us the balance [that we desired] - part of this was because of the carburetion and the manifold and all that stuff - we couldn't get the ergonomics that we wanted with anybody else's engine. Or we had to go to a smaller engine that didn't have the power. So very early on, we decided that we needed to make our own engine." What originally possessed you to enter the motorcycle industry? What was your inspiration, and what were your goals? J.M.: "Well, I think we realized that the bicycle industry was not going to grow as rapidly [as it had], and our culture and so on is wrapped around that issue. So we started looking around. I really think it's because we realized in the end that hard-core mountain bikers - which, of course, is where we live either have been, are, or want to ride a dirt bike. The overlap in the customer base is enormous. We understood that, and we have a number of people - because we have a number of hard-core mountain bikers in our company - we had a lot of people who were riding dirt bikes, and riding enduro bikes to work, and taking off up over the hill and through the woods to go home. It was kind of a natural thing. And, as I said, we had two of the three core technologies. We knew a lot about manipulating and forming aluminum. I think we probably know as much or more about that than anybody in the world, when it comes to applying it to balanced two-wheeled vehicles and four-wheeled vehicles. And we had the suspension technology - we know a lot about suspension, and what works and what doesn't, and why you want to do it this way and not that way. It was a natural for us." Have your goals changed over the past three years? J.M.: "No. We're a group of people that are passionate about what we do. I can imagine that this group would fall apart in a hurry if we started making paper clips or something. They're passionate about "We just stay focused on what we know is the objective, and feel confident that we can get there." own testing program until we brought it inside. We said, 'Well, those guys must know what they're doing.' Now, of course we have all of our own testing stuff. "We should have done this short of two years instead of three years, and it's just been very frustrating. So the first product that we brought out was plain and simple - just not what it should have been. It had a lot of good ideas, and it was kind of like some other products that we've had along the way. When we did some suspension technology going way back, people said, 'It's the best.. .' and then there was cue. e n e _ S • APRIL 14, 2001 23