I guess my thing is that I'm a bit sensitive to seeing someone go through a lot of effort to give something credentials it doesn't have. Don't get me wrong, I'm not doubting that the bike has been made to be very capable, but that's not the thing that it's getting attention for. It gets attention for being different and flamboyant, rather like someone showing up to a formal function in a brightly colored tuxedo. In my idea of a perfect world, there wouldn't be a market for "false sponsor" stickers and flamboyant tires, because people would look past that and appreciate what really makes the bike go.
I'd like to take a page from the world of fast cars. The exterior is simple and stylish, but what really sets it apart is the piece of equipment under the hood. People don't adorn these things with stickers unless they're being paid to do so. There's a Calvin & Hobbs cartoon in which Calvin wants a shirt with a company logo on it. "It says to the world, this company has manipulated me so much, I will pay THEM to advertise for them!"
So, I suppose if you were to condense this all down into one pithy statement, it would be this. I don't like anything added to a bike or other serious piece of machinery that's there to distract from the things that really matter. When people see that YZ, they instantly think, "Wow, blue tires! He must be compensating for something!" Even if you managed to get 55 horses from that thing, all that true performance work would be completely overshadowed by the aesthetic elephants of cotton-candy-knobbies.
If my opinion may seem a bit strong, that's because it is. I believe that when one softens their statements, they come dangerously close to the sort of censorship that has struck the Bike Magazine industry. At what point does the true opinion, "I think X is ridiculous," get transformed into, "X is sure to make great waves in pit lane?" That's my take, anyway, and I expect the same thing from everyone else. If 80% of everyone thinks my bike is ugly, I don't want to hear from just 20% of the people. It leads to delusion; because being ridiculed is a great way to tell whether you're doing something ridiculous.
