Vital MX Awards Show, Part 1: Product of the Year 3

You’ve made your selections, cast your ballots, and we’ve got the final results for the first two categories in our first-ever Vital MX Awards. So what do you say we hand out the hardware, and hear from some of the recipients.

But first up, here’s a little bit about how we determined the winners. We combined the results of on-site polling from readers, a select group of industry folks, and the Vital MX staff. We used a formula where the Vital MX members counted toward 60% of the result, and the industry folks and Vital MX staff each accounted for 20% of the final say.

Okay, with all the clinical details out of the way...a funny thing happened on the way to picking a Product of the Year...our winner ceased operations right in the middle of balloting. Yep, the Alta MXR/EXR was the choice of two of the three voting staff members at Vital MX, a runaway winner among the reader voting, and second in the industry balloting. Using our voting formula (60% reader, 20% industry, and 20% staff), Alta garnered just over half of the available votes.

In our eyes, Alta had done an amazing job of development over the last couple of years. We marveled at the variety of events that they were able to ride and compete in; and how the “combustion engine only” crowd had not only settled down in their rhetoric, but had actually started to express some interest in electric bikes. It looked like they’d hit the tipping point towards some serious public attention.

We’re not sure where things went wrong for Alta, though it looks like a on/off investment relationship with Harley-Davidson certainly didn’t help...or maybe it just extended the lifespan a bit before the end. We reached out to a couple of our contacts there to let them know about the award, but never received a response.

Will we see Alta return in the future to produce off-road bikes? That remains to be seen. There’s certainly some very interesting intellectual property sitting idle out there. Maybe with some new capitol, we could see this reignite.

Oh yeah, as for the rest of the results? The Yamaha YZ65 had about a quarter of the voting. We liked that they were entering new territory, and with a two-stroke model, no less. They topped the industry vote, as well. Yamaha’s tuner app (with about 15% of the ballots), and 6D’s ATR-2 helmet (10%) rounded out the voting.

One thing we can say, is that while we experienced the oddest of quirks while trying to hand out a trophy in our first time trying, we also hope we never to experience this again.

Check back tomorrow, and we'll unveil our 2018 Person of the Year.