The Bontrager-Story offers enough material for legends. The engeneer, constructing engeneer, physicist, mechanic, driver and born Do-it-yourself-guy Keith Bontrager joined the arising mountain bike scene in the late 70s – with a scientific approach to frame construction, his comprehension of materials and their processing.
Until the 80s, he collected frames and components that had failed in use, and then analyzed why they had failed. Because Keith had committed himself to the goal of creating better, longer-lasting structures. From this period comes his famous aphorism: „Stable. Light. Cheap. Choose two of them.“ Bontrager himself chose the first two without any hesitation and developed some of the strongest and lightest components that could be bought for money. Because he was always skeptical of conventional wisdom and prefered depending on the hard reality, Keith asked for parts that were first stable, then as light as possible - and often not cheap.