The AMP research "Design" bikes.
In 1991 Horst Leitner's primarily Motorcycle-based company, AMP RESEARCH, turned its attention to the challenge of creating a full suspension mountain bike. At that time, front suspension was in it;s infancy, suspendion stems were hot commodities, and rear suspension was something that generally sucked the will to live clean out of anyone hapless enough to ride.
One of Leitners employees, Karl Nicolai (now owner of Nicolai bikes : www.nicolai.net) , designed a four-bar suspension- with a pivot behind the bottom bracket and another on the chainstay just in front of and often below rear axle-that rode efficiently and was generally undisturbed by pedal or brakes forces.
(Something i hated with my old S-Bike, that shifted when i rode hard)
The new AMP design four-bar, dubbed thereafter the "HORST LINK", came to be known as the first really effective rear suspension for mountainbikes.
Amazingly, the HORST LINK became populair in spite of the incredible fragility of the bikes using thedesign. The early AMP bikes, and the MONGOOSE rigs that licensed the design , were very light and notoriously underbuilt. Still, the design showed enough promise for Specialized to adopt it for its FSR line. It also showed up on GT's LTS bikes and a host of other brands, gaining widespread acceptance all the way up to 1998 when Specialized purchased the rights to the AMP patent, and began aggressively defending it's use.
(Source ; BIKE magazine)
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