25 Years of XTR
6 Dec 2016
When I first started mountain biking, my friends and I would pass around copies of Mountain Bike Action, reading about bikes we could only dream of… certainly far more capable than the Repco and Apollo 12 speeds we were getting around on.
About that time the first generation of Shimano XTR had launched. While we’d never even seen parts that cost half as much, our (very imaginary) dream bikes simply weren’t up to scratch if they weren’t specced with an XTR drivetrain.
Regardless of when you discovered mountain biking, you could probably define that period by the generation of XTR around at the time – whether it was the smooth, road-bike-like lines of M900, the CNC’d matte finish of the M950, or the two-tone, angular look of M970.
Sure, Shimano mountain bike groupsets may have lost mindshare in recent years. However, XTR will always have a place in MTB history, and be synonymous with the ultimate high end drivetrain.
