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The first bikes, scheduled for 2004 introduction, will consist of hardtail mountain bikes with classic Joe Murray geometry and design details.
“Joe is one of the most respected mountain bike racers and designers in the industry,” said Joshua Hon, Dahon’s vice president of sales and marketing.
“It’s going to be a blast working with him on our new bikes. Joe’s ability to leverage his riding experience with technical insight and translate that into products makes him a bike designer virtually without peer.”
Joe Murray, a two-time mountain bike US national champion and member of the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame, said:
“Working with Dahon will be a fun new challenge. They’ve got a huge stable of R&D engineers and lot of innovative new projects just waiting to be worked on.
"The cool thing about their portable mountain bikes is that with the right frame geometry and components, they’ll ride just as well as any other hardtail mountain bike I’ve designed. Of course the folding feature adds some weight but for a lot of people, a few hundred grams of additional weight is a reasonable trade off for a super portable bike.”
Murray has designed bikes for Kona, Marin, Merlin and Voodoo.
Earlier this year, Dahon announced a partnership with Ritchey and plans to introduce a high-performance 700c road bike in the autumn.
"With partnerships with Ritchey for road bikes and Joe Murray for mountain bikes, Dahon is well positioned to develop very high performance portable bicycles," said Hon.
