If I Had The Controls....

My old 2007 El Mariachi

Sometimes it is fun to play "What If?" when it comes to how things played out. One of the events in cycling design and branding that has always haunted me is, "Why did Trek kill off the Gary Fisher Brand?" That one has always baffled me. But there are other stories as well that have me thinking "what if" from time to time. 

Recently I was reminded of the old Salsa El Mariachi model hard tail 29"er bike. For anyone that doesn't remember, (I have to keep reminding myself that many of you don't catalog memories, or are not old enough to know things that I have stuffed into my brain closet), the Salsa El Mariachi was Salsa Cycles take on a 29" wheeled mountain bike. Not the first model that Salsa ever made with big wheels. That would be the Dos Niner in 2005. No, the El Mar, as we lovingly called it, was the steel hardtail, "do it all" 29"er hard tail bike meant to be tweaked into whatever it was you thought a 29"er should be. Suspension fork? Get one and throw it on. Single speed? The El Mar, well the original one, anyway, had an eccentric bottom bracket, so you could do that. Bike pack? Yes! Gravel bike? Yes! It was a super-versatile, really nice riding steel hard tail. 

Times changed. The El Mariachi spawned the Fargo, (Yes, in part it did), and then full suspension, slacker this, steeper that, and whatnot came into vogue. Salsa Cycles trimmed out the El Mariachi to be a single speed that could be geared, and sales plummeted. The geometry stayed stale, and finally it was time to upgrade the model. Only they didn't. They introduced the Timberjack. That's an okay bike, but what about a modernized El Mar? Many, well......maybe just me, thought that there was a place for a versatile, steel, 29"er MTB that could do anything. Why did the El Mariachi idea go away?

The Panorama Taiga. (Image courtesy of Panorama)

So, I saw a review for a bicycle recently called the Panorama Taiga which sparked my memories concerning my old El Mariachi. This bicycle was lauded as a great 'all-around' MTB by a reviewer, and so I'll take his word for that. But after looking at the geometry table and at the feature set this bike has, well, it's hard for me to not think about what could have been.

I always thought Salsa should have just updated the El Mariachi. Keep it steel. but allow a tapered steer tube fork. Modernize the geometry, but don't go overboard with that. Add on some Three-Pack bosses on a rigid fork option, or sell it with suspension. Keep the single speed option, but use the Alternator Drop Outs. Allow for big, fat 29"er tires on wider rims. If they only would have done that....

And since they haven't, we get bikes like Tumbleweed Prospectors and this Panorama Taiga. Remember when I mentioned that the El Mar spawned the Fargo? Well, even Panorama has a Taiga EXT which is a drop bar version of this idea. Take away something that was popular, modernize it, and sell it from another company. It could have been Salsa Cycles, but........maybe only if I had the controls! Maybe no one else would have bought this idea and if you look at this Panorama Taiga, check out that price. Oof! Yeah...... You're not going to sell many of those whether or not it is a Salsa.

But if I had a hankering for a mountain bike, this is probably what I would get, or something very similar to it.