A great bike if you always wear shorts, don't ride in the rain, never need to transport anything but yourself, and you don't get thirsty while riding.
(What's amazing about the engineering? A low-end internally-geared hub? Internal cable-routing? Internally geared hubs have been around for more than 100 years. Time trial bikes have used internal cable routing for ages.)
As you point out, the bicycle industry has been around for some time. Bicycle design and engineering has been improving for 100+ years.
Mission Bicycles are designed for a specific purpose, commuting in American cities. We optimized for:
- Ride feel: A frame geometry that put riders in an up-right position for comfort and visibility and made the bicycle very stable and responsive even at low speeds.
- Strength: Components and materials that are strong enough to last a life time even with the daily abuse of a city commute.
- Ease of use: Other than fixing an occasional flat, brake pad swap, or chain grease there is nothing on the bicycle to fidget with or break. We literally took everything off the bike that you don't need for a city commute which saves greatly on weight. A typical Mission Bicycle weighs in at 16lbs, which is important for when you need to cary it up a flight of stairs.
The bicycle features you mention (bottle cages, fenders, racks, etc.) were purposefully excluded from the bicycle's design to save on weight, maintenance, and cost.
