With the mountain bike market
expanding into lower price ranges, the custom manufacturers were losing
market share to the imported bikes. Many of the custom makers were
looking for ways to offer less expensive bikes to these price conscious
consumers. The Mountain Goat frame was very labor intensive with
the shaped tubing and a high degree of finish work. The Escape
Goat substituted regular round 4130 cro-moly tubing and unfinished
fillet brazed joints to get the cost down to about half the price of a
regular Mountain Goat frame. They were then usually finished off
with a little less expensive parts package. This resulted in a
bike that sold in the $800 range as opposed to the top Deluxe model at
about $1,500.
