Prototypes

There has been some suggestion that the early Black and Blue frames floating around are proto-types, I'm not so sure and I'm lead to beleive that the Black is probably the first MX series. One thing we can be sure of is the Blue frame in the MX section which has a plate for the rear brake bridge, is a Prototype.


On Sandy Finkelman's website he*goes on to say that the original proto-types were produced in 1977 (though none of the the images are referred as 'proto-type'). Wheels n Things / Sandy went back to DiamondBack on several occasions because the geometry and design were found to be flawed after initial race testing and requested they fix these issues before manufacturing continued (In other words don't make*start the process to deliver to the public until*these issues have been ironed out). Surely wouldn't be right to deliver something to the marketplace that could indefinately ruin the DiamondBack brand before they had even got their feet off the ground.


Another interesting point is why would the Black*be*a limited edition and only a very few manufactured during a year if they were proto-types (you don't manufacture limited edition proto-types). We already know that only a limited amout were manufactured, hence why only a few are popping up.


It's my theory that the WIG serialised frames are simply early retail MX framesets (true proto-types would have an entirely different number format I'm sure). Some may disagree, but until I'm given evidence to the contrary my logic will surfice.