Eric F 

That comparison has been made lots of times. Usually by people who have no idea what they’re talking about.

bOsscO

Anyone riding gravel bikes today has seen (or heard, or discussed, or defended) that "gravel bikes are just 1990s mountain bikes" and likely ad nauseum.

unterhausen

I swear I've seen pictures of Tomac on big rocks with one of his drop bar full rigid mtbs, but I'm also sure that he would have been a lot faster on a modern full suspension mtb.
I see the drop bar hardtail mountain bikes companies are marketing as gravel bikes, and really wonder how many they are going to sell. The gravel bikes I think most people are interested in are fairly similar to CX bikes with reasonable clearance for tires. I think a dropper post would be nice though.

I thought that was the joke in the OP, but something seemed off. I guess I was right about that. We have the "didn't they used to be called hybrids" thread too. No, go back to the hybrid forum with that nonsense.

Polaris OBark

I got my Advocate drop bar steel mountain bike frame for 2/3 off the list price, presumably because of all the ubiquitous mountain bike drop bar hate.

In other news, is my Di2 gravel bike a form of e-bike?

unterhausen

I don't think people hate drop bar mountain bikes, but they just don't see an advantage to them and want a normal mtb. Current mountain bikes have really wide handlebars to deal with all the trail that comes from slack head tubes. I don't see people matching that with a drop bar. For one thing, hooking the bars on a tree would become even more dangerous. At least when you smack a mtb handlebar on a tree it doesn't grab ahold of it. Same reason bar ends went away.

Spoonrobot 

Dan Empfield (the guy from Slowtwitch) talks about showing people what things do before marketing and advertising, the idea that you can't just put something functional out there and expect people to get it or want it. A perfect example is the 750d wheelsize - they released it as a product and people were resistant and irritated with it. Instead, if they had put it under riders at the Lifetime Grand Prix events or the domestic UCI gravel events it would have shown the capabilities and potentially grown organically from there.

This is the same issue the Niner MCR ran into - nobody ever did anything with that bike and people treated it like a joke.

Meanwhile, in the past couple years, bigger Youtube personalities show and then tell. Vegan Cyclist rips it up at a bunch of different domestic events on his short travel Canyon gravel bike - more people are taking 30/40mm forks seriously. Dylan Johnson does a ton of races on 700cx47 Pathfinders and goes to push the limit even wider trying to find the breakpoint, same with his drop bar MTB. It gets people thinking and experimenting, more than a press release and static product introduction.

People experimented with drop bar MTBs inspired by Tomac contemporaneously as well, just not much info online about that.

Dropbar MTBs struggle because most people don't have enough access to terrain to make them worthwhile and it's a big spend to build one up to use for a handful of events. We have a decent access to both here in the SE and even then it's a lot of maintenance and expense for a bike that is seemingly more limited than both a gravel bike and a MTB. Heavier, slower, on the road with more maintenance than a gravel bike. Slower and harder to ride on singletrack than an MTB. It's a really fun niche, but a difficult product and activity with limited appeal.

HTupolev

It feels to me like one of the biggest problems for gnarly drop-bar bikes is bicycle designers terrified of negative stem.

Spoonrobot 

Negative rise? Or negative reach?

HTupolev

Negative reach. If the gnarliness demands a big front-center, and you don't want trail super high because you're intending to use handlebars that aren't super wide, and those bars have primary contact points sitting well forward of the clamp, it's not crazy to humor a clamp position rearward of the center of the steering axis. Especially if you want a functionally-traditional "tops" position, either for direct ergonomic reasons or for clamping currently-available aerobars or whatever.

unterhausen

I can see why they would be afraid of negative reach stems. Nobody would buy, they'd be out of a job and not be able to get another position in the industry. At least for the next several years. It seems quite possible that the next step for mtb will be negative reach stems, since zero length stems have become fairly popular. I guess to me, trying to make gravel bikes into mtb's is likely to result in niche products. The nice thing about most gravel bikes is they make pretty good road bikes. I can't see using a drop bar almost-mtb as a road bike.

I have started lengthening the top tube and shortening the stem on my bikes. Not enough to need a zero length stem though.