No. Instead of relying on magazines, our manufacturers pay firms who specialize in FEA to do it with them. The accuracy and relevancy of the specific biketest.de tests have been rightly exposed as being suspect.
In the old days, "testing" meant putting some people on the product and sending them off down the trail. It hasn't been that way for a long time. What happened? Everyone broke all that ultralight crap. CNC'd crapsticks, like Tune & Extralight are making now, machined out of 7075 billet, usually taking parts from the soft core. Since then, Product Liability Insurance is the biggest driving force behind every aspect of any American Bike Companies product. Are products "tested"? Yes. And not by bike companies. By testing companies, who specialize in simulating conditions properly. Frames, components, accessories, you name it. It's not unusual for the Liability insurance per part to hit 30% of the wholesale cost of the part. In those cases, the insurance company stands to make the largest amount of profit that product generates. What does this mean? To keep that percentage down, we have to prove that the products are safe. We do this by not touching the stuff ourselves. We're a bike company, not a product testing labratory. You get a specialist to do that if you want it done right. And the insurance companies want it done right. Everyone tests their products. Often, test results are garbage, due to an astronomical number of variables. The German biketest tests are typically performed on a single unit, often rushed, and often entirely inappropriate. Each of these flaws produces garbage data. This has been covered over and over. If it's not obvious how each of these flaws arise & what effect they have on the results, it can be found talking to any manufacturer, & writeups can be found all over the net. Don at Anvil has a quick synopsis on his site, off the top of my head.
It's late, and I'm tired as hell.
But first, Horst Lietner was a smart guy. His famed pivot is a nice, inexpensive, effective way of getting the job done. There are many ways to accomplish the job though. The manner in which the licenses to its use were yanked nearly bankrupted a host of smaller, high-end builders. I never thought I'd be glad to see Horst's lovely pivot made obsolete, but the VPP pioneered by Outland and others offers a greater range of performance options, and most importantly, freedom, for both framebuilders & riders. Sadly, we'll continue to watch as the real estate of the bike frame (to put a pivot in) is once again claimed and purchased in small chunks, until it's gone, and everyone will again find themselves pointing lawyers at each other, attempting to drive each other out of their territory. In the end they'll piss away each others paltry earnings on attourneys. Again. What a sad, strange little industry sometimes.
