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Future of the Turner DHR

ocelot

ocelot

Monkey
Mar 8, 2009
395
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Does anyone know what's happening to the Turner DHR?

After cracking my 2008 DHR, I've finally amassed enough funds to purchase a medium frame in raw. However, I was told that they were out of raw frames and only had anodized ones in stock. I then asked if they would receive new stock in the near future and all I got was "This is it." When I asked whether they're stopping the production of DHRs, I never received an answer...

This brings me to speculate. Is Turner planning on introducing a new DH bike or are they getting the hell out of this niche discipline? Seeing the amazing clearance prices of the DHRs recently, my speculations aren't unfounded imo. Any of you has any "insider" info? ;)
 
Nick

Nick

My name is Nick
Sep 21, 2001
24,017
14,630
where the trails are
No insider info.

That said, with Turner having started selling carbon frames I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a fantastic plastic version of the DHR.

Then again, DT has been pushing more and more towards the trail & "enduro" segements of late. Maybe he did give up on DH. That would be a real shame.
 
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Bikael Molton

Bikael Molton

goofy for life
Jun 9, 2003
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Nick said:
No insider info.

That said, with Turner having started selling carbon frames I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a fantastic plastic version of the DHR.

Then again, DT has been pushing more and more towards the trail & "enduro" segements of late. Maybe he did give up on DH. That would be a real shame.
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Turner has always been all over the trail segment.
 
norbar

norbar

KESSLER PROBLEM. Just cause
Jun 7, 2007
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Orange had that idea for a while, then decided against it. I doubt it will be different here. It may be a small business but it still makes money, especially if you are a small company. Well unless the sales of the DHR have been really really bad compared to the old model
 
gnarbar

gnarbar

Monkey
Oct 22, 2011
136
3
norbar said:
Well unless the sales of the DHR have been really really bad compared to the old model
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Generally acknowledged that DH sales have sunk into a pit. Lots of bargains/clearance opportunities over the past 18 months. sales of new frames are like hen's teeth. A bike shop here, in the land of freeride and DH/lift assisted gravity riding, sold just ONE DH bike in 12 months. Nobody in the supply chain can afford to back a product line like that.

I can see why the DHR (like a few others) would struggle to justify another production run. It's not even a comparison to other brands or previous DHR's - just buying trends.

Beautiful bike, I was a gnat's ball hair away from buying one last year. It's sad to see bikes like these, the Ferrari of cycling, start to fade away. IMO it's a loss to the industry but that industry has to make a profit. Their focus is on AM/enduro, mainstream/volume, and big wheelz. Makes sense.
 
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StiHacka

StiHacka

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Jan 4, 2013
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With the DHR frames having been on sale, the writing was on the wall for a while. I bought one last fall and I am happy I did. I think that Dave sees more demand for a bigger cousin of the Burner so that's where his investments would go next.
 
fred.r

fred.r

Dwangus Bogans
May 9, 2006
842
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motomike said:
That sums it up. Gonna be sad to see such a great DH bike go the way of the dinosaur.
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You're stating that as if it's a fact.... Which it isn't. Assumptions are fine, considering we have no official word from Turner, but I'm betting we haven't seen the end of the DHR.
 
yd35

yd35

Monkey
Oct 28, 2008
741
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Dave Turner chimes in on the Turner forum in MTBR quite a bit, and from what i can gather, it doesn't sound like he's nixing the DHR. I do get the feeling that they're spending less and less resources on DH, one obvious sign being that they stopped sponsoring DH teams, and I believe Dave Turner mentioned that there wasn't any carbon or 27.5 DHR in the works.
 
buildyourown

buildyourown

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Feb 9, 2004
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I bought one last year as well. Honestly, even at the ano prices it's an incredible deal. (trade in your cracked frame)
It's the best riding bike I've ever been on.

Remember there was no DHR for most of 2009-2010. The ran out the old ones w/o a replacement. I doubt Turner has ever made a dime on the DHR in 15 years. It's a halo bike. The 5-spot pays the bills. (now Burner)
I'll bet it comes back after the 27.5 fad flushes out. If it sticks in DH or not.
 
Ian Collins

Ian Collins

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Oct 4, 2001
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The DHR will come back. I can almost guarantee it won't be carbon and it's highly unlikely that it will be 27.5. There will be something new from their camp surfacing around sea otter ish...after that, I think the DHR will get some love from David and a revision. In my opinion, the DHR is still just as good as every other DH bike out there...it's not antiquated by any means.

The bottom line is that every time Turner makes a DH bike it's at the top of it's class and remains relevant for 4-5 years after it's inception...They are a small company and can't make revisions every other year nor can they afford to just blindly follow this schizophrenic market...David doesn't care about hype or making a bunch of noise...When it makes sense he'll bring another version to fruition, but it could take a while.
 
yd35

yd35

Monkey
Oct 28, 2008
741
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NY
No carbon or 650b, which of course gives us...the DHR 29er!!!

But all kidding aside, I love my DHR. The geometry and suspension are top notch. Unfortunately, the rider is not. :(
 
peecee

peecee

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Apr 27, 2012
232
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Like Cannondale I'd love to see Turner back on the WC circuit, I love the look of the DHR but have never thrown a leg over.........How do the DW DHR's go ? I'm sure very well.

If I win the lotto its Turner would be one of the bikes I'd look at using on my team for WC's and Danny Hart, Sam Hill and a few others would be the pilots :thumb:
 
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ocelot

ocelot

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Mar 8, 2009
395
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Canadastan
The reason why I wanted the raw one was because I was planning on dressing it up with a complete Martini Racing livery...
I could do a Gulf livery with the orange one, but would the anodized orange look good with baby blue? I'd probably do a Lotus/Caterham livery on the green one but the colour isn't british racing green enough. Buuuuuut I still think that Martini would have been best since it was plastered on Lancia and Porsche rally cars.

Oh my gaaawwwd I'm such a girl :D
 
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Samoto

Samoto

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Dec 16, 2013
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ocelot said:
The reason why I wanted the raw one was because I was planning on dressing it up with a complete Martini Racing livery...
I could do a Gulf livery with the orange one, but would the anodized orange look good with baby blue? I'd probably do a Lotus/Caterham livery on the green one but the colour isn't british racing green enough. Buuuuuut I still think that Martini would have been best since it was plastered on Lancia and Porsche rally cars.

Oh my gaaawwwd I'm such a girl :D
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at least you didnt purchase a prada bag, or did you? :D McLarens look nice in silver color.

 
RayB

RayB

Monkey
Jan 31, 2008
744
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Seattle
Like many have said in this thread, the DHR is definitely not an antiquated frame -- it's still very much on the bleeding edge, save for frame material (and by extension, weight).

FWIW... Turner, as a company, is probably not in the best of financial shape given their sales in the past few years.
 
shelteringsky

shelteringsky

Monkey
May 21, 2010
307
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Just a quick question: for anyone who's checked out the frames on the website, what MSRP are you getting? It starts out at $1695 for me, then changes quickly to $1945 when the page fully loads. :confused:

I'm not in the US so perhaps that's got something to do with it?
 
bizutch

bizutch

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I love my DHR and anyone who has ridden it (not that I let people) knows it's the beez neez.

When I last talked with Greg, he said it's just absurd the fickle whimsy people have with bikes and carbonz and buying whatever the last guy won a World Cup on. DH purchase habits at this point are pretty nutty. If you slipped a DHR under an Atherton for half a season, demand would go through the roof. I don't envy any private company trying to chase the bouncing ball.

That being said, anyone who is the owner of a Turner bike (I have two that are thoroughly beaten, yet as solid as the day I got them) knows how wonderful they are from the top down.

Much love to Dave Turner, Greg Wulff, Jarrett and on down the line.
 
ButtersNZ

ButtersNZ

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Jun 6, 2013
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Gulf livery all the way! You cracked your frame a while ago yeah? Better get one quick, not riding sucks!
 
Sandwich

Sandwich

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bizutch said:
When I last talked with Greg, he said it's just absurd the fickle whimsy people have with bikes and carbonz and buying whatever the last guy won a World Cup on. DH purchase habits at this point are pretty nutty.
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Is that really true though? I mean, intense seems to be doing really, really well, despite having pretty limited world cup presence, and they are constantly tinkering. On that note, why shouldn't a company the size of turner (read: small) have the ability to adjust geometries and characteristics on the fly? Yeah, maybe not with carbon, but you should be able to adjust the head angle a few degrees, or release a wider shock shuttle, or lift the BB, or add 275 compatibility BEFORE the big mclargehuge companies can, not after 5 years of product run.
 
ocelot

ocelot

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Mar 8, 2009
395
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Canadastan
ButtersNZ said:
Gulf livery all the way! You cracked your frame a while ago yeah? Better get one quick, not riding sucks!
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Hahah I thought about ways to execute the Gulf livery... The problem is that the livery has to have a blue base colour and orange accents. The frame is orange, so I'll be needing heaps of vinyl...

The season is supposed to start at the beginning of May, but with the big snowfall that we just had yesterday, I think that I might have a little more time to make the purchase ;)
 
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ocelot

ocelot

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Mar 8, 2009
395
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Sandwich said:
Is that really true though? I mean, intense seems to be doing really, really well, despite having pretty limited world cup presence, and they are constantly tinkering. On that note, why shouldn't a company the size of turner (read: small) have the ability to adjust geometries and characteristics on the fly? Yeah, maybe not with carbon, but you should be able to adjust the head angle a few degrees, or release a wider shock shuttle, or lift the BB, or add 275 compatibility BEFORE the big mclargehuge companies can, not after 5 years of product run.
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AFAIK Turner had always outsourced its manufacturing. I think that's where the problem lies.
 
Sandwich

Sandwich

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yeah, but not far. Kinesis and then the other guys...still shouldn't be a big deal to change production runs at some point. When I called about buying one, they said there would be a wait as the frames hadn't been built yet....so it's not like they're just clearing out stock.
 
bizutch

bizutch

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I'm winging this, but you do have to understand that Turner sources it's metal frames in and of the US at a US factory that dumped it's frame building division. It's been well documented for some time.

Then, of all things to smack a small company in the face, SAPA sent the first batch of hotly anticipated and pre-sold DHR's out with head tubes that literally wouldn't make it a single ride. Greg said they literally cracked FIRST RIDE. This after a history of not ONE SINGLE DHR head tube ever snapping in the past.

Turner had to pull back all the frames, have them re-welded and either honor the sale or find new buyers....months later. Then have a second company step in in the same locale and fire up production again after their customer base had to find something else to ride.

If Ford didn't come out with a 2015 F150 and couldn't sell them for an extended period, it would be brutal too.
 
dan-o

dan-o

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bizutch said:
I'm winging this, but you do have to understand that Turner sources it's metal frames in and of the US at a US factory that dumped it's frame building division. It's been well documented for some time.

Then, of all things to smack a small company in the face, SAPA sent the first batch of hotly anticipated and pre-sold DHR's out with head tubes that literally wouldn't make it a single ride. Greg said they literally cracked FIRST RIDE. This after a history of not ONE SINGLE DHR head tube ever snapping in the past.

Turner had to pull back all the frames, have them re-welded and either honor the sale or find new buyers....months later. Then have a second company step in in the same locale and fire up production again after their customer base had to find something else to ride.

If Ford didn't come out with a 2015 F150 and couldn't sell them for an extended period, it would be brutal too.
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You make it sound like Turners never had issues before this gen DHR.
Their legendary reputation for warranty service didn't appear from a lack of warranties.
I love my turners but my 5spot rear end exploded twice (FSR and faux-bar) and the hangers were made of soft cheese for a while. Crabjoe's fleet of 3 turners were all warrantied frames, too.

If Evil could come back from similar horrors, on their sole product offering, then the low volume DHR shouldn't be able to topple the turner house of cards.

I think he waited too long to implement significant change in his products and the DW bikes were too little, too late for too much $$ (development and royalty costs, not msrp) in a market that had moved on.

A closeout DHR almost made it into my garage but I opted for a v10c purely because I felt SC would be able to support me better should problems arise.
 
bizutch

bizutch

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The derailleur hanger this is kind of an odd complaint, considering it's a common size offering you can get generics of at any bike shop. Plus, I don't know that I've ever owned a bike I didn't bend a hanger on.

As for the whole Evil thing, keep in mind that big money MS Racing funded that race team, not Evil. I doubt that really equated to a ton of sales. Plus, you're comparing Turner to Evil, who is buying carbon frames from a large overseas factory.
 
Sandwich

Sandwich

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rpet said:
Yep - completely different scenario from Intense.
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true, but you're working with a vendor you've had a relationship for what, 15, 20 years? that's also in the US? it shouldn't be impossible to make a running change (like they did with the headtube issue) should the need arise, or make an update, should you prefer it. I guess I'm of the opinion that a small company should act like a small company, and not like one of the big boys when it comes to product development and launches. That's one of my concerns with intense so obsessed with carbon and with crank bro taking over the helm. Are we going to start to see multi-year long product cycles, just because you need to get your money out of the mold? Are they going to square-peg the round hole until it fits, like with the kronolog, even when it's a terrible design with horrible reception?

I guess some middle ground between Jeff Steber's daily doodle going to production and 5 years of the same soup, reheated, would be where I'd picture a company like turner.
 
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