production summary


Production numbers are often guesswork, especially as mass production moved to Asia and the world moved to riding off road.

Year1970s 1980s 1990s
6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3
Total Production 1 10 60 200 500 2,000 15,000 1) 200,000 1,000,0002) 2,500,0003) 6,000,00030,000,00050,000,000 4)55,000,00060,000,00060,000,0005)60,000,00060,000,000
2022/02/02 16:08 · mtbtimeline

Worldwide Bicycle Production

bike production
Mountain bikes drove an 80's boom in bicycle sales. Graph from: campagnolodelta

us bike sales
US Bike sales from 1981→2005.
Mt. bikes were 10% of US sales in 1984 and doubled to 20% of US sales by 1985.6) bicycleretailer

1)
Early US production numbers went up by a factor of 10 each year: The Birth of Dirt (3rd ed.) by Frank J. Berto.
2)
According to The Dancing Chain by Frank Berto, page 246, 1M mt. bikes were sold in 1984.
3)
Late production numbers from booksc.org “From Marin County's Seventies Clunker to the Durango World Championship 1990: A History of Mountain Biking in the USA”, by Savre, Frédéric, Saint-Martin, Jean, Terret, Thierry, August 2010. This source counted 550,000 mt. bikes sold only in the US.
4)
Mountain bikes drove a doubling of world wide bike sales during the 1980's to a peak of 110 million in 1988, of which 50% were mountain bikes, or at least 50 million. By 1990, mt. bikes were 65% of the market, or roughly 60 million. Sources: https://www.ibike.org/library/statistics-data.htm, https://ur.booksc.org/book/51351438/a06749.
5)
Bike sales plateaued during the early 90's before crashing in 1998.
6)
See https://www.cyclepublishing.com/cyclingbooks/dc.html7The Dancing Chain by Frank Berto, page 248