I’ve featured Cannondales before – the Cannondale X440 was the swansong of Cannondale motorcycles, a subsidiary of the well-known American bicycling company. In the late 90s, Cannondale tried to move into motorsports, with an off-road bike and an ATV. Long story short, it was a disaster. $80 million later, the company declared bankruptcy, having left behind an interesting story of what happens when you can’t live up to the hype. Here’s your chance to get three claimed R&D production race bikes to see if they were any better than what was released to market!
The X440 and X400 were spec’d with premium components, like Ohlins forks and rear shock, Magura controls, and Fuel Injection. The company said all the right things when developing the bike – Dirt Rider magazine even named it the bike of the year two years before it was released! In certain ways, it was a decade ahead of the times. Features like a backwards cylinder, an upfront airbox, electric start, and fuel injection took several more years to make it to the dirt bikes of the big 5 manufacturers. Unfortunately, all this tech (especially in the engine) caused engineering problems that Cannondale struggled to solve. Pre-production units showed lots of little problems, and Cannondale rushed the bike to market, where it was revealed to be heavy, undersprung, and fairly unreliable. Want to learn more about why this bike flopped? PulpMX has an interesting read on the X400 as part of a “Worst Bikes Ever” article. Find it here.
The seller is offering a ’01 MX400 and two ’02 MX440s that are all apparently “factory prepared R&D production race bikes.” The claim is that these bikes were modified by the factory to develop new performance features during the week so they could be raced on weekends. In an absolutely useless sentence to potential buyers, you’re told that the “bikes were in running condition last time they were started.” Ignoring that, all bikes have custom re-valved Ohlins shocks and forks and the package comes with an extensive collection of NOS dealer inventory with lots of parts.
Find this set of bikes for sale in Lake Worth, Florida with an opening bid of $3,000 or a BIN of $6,000
This bike-uriousity brought to you by David N!