While the credit for what Karpiel bikes have accomplished in the field belongs to the riders, the revolutionary frame designs that made it all possible began in the deserts of Utah over 15 years ago.

After racing motocross in Carlsbad, Saddleback and Indian Dunes, Jan Karpiel turned his attention to mountain biking, though he quickly grew disappointed by the design of the mountain bikes offered at the time. “They were all about climbing. None of them had placed an emphasis on downhill,” he remembers. The rider position was too far forward and there was no suspension. Slowly, bikes began to appear with front forks using elastomers for a spring. Then came the early full suspension bikes. After enduring a season on an elastimer suspended full suspension bike, Jan began working on his own suspension bike.

VRS
Drawing on his motor sports experience, he set out to design a bike that would use a modern, gas-charged oil coil spring shock mounted to the rear swing arm via an adjustable progression linkage. The first production bike on the market to use this technology was the VRS. The VRS was advanced and might have been a little misunderstood in its day, but it set the stage for the famous bikes that came after it.

The VRS was one of the first bikes to feature a single pivot swingarm in the low forward position, which gave the bike an anti-squat feature, allowing the pulling torque of the chain to stiffen the suspension. After extensive testing, Jan realized the anti-squat feature of a single pivot bike had a rising rate character and made the suspension appear too rigid during hard sprints in the rough terrain, so he set out to design a new, multi-link system in which the anti-squat feature has a falling rate character.  The resulting anti-squat design had a rigid field on smooth terrain while retaining good compliance sprinting in the rough. He named this design the “Disco Volanté”.