Cannondale filed for bankrupty in January of 2003, and ATk bought the rights to the engine soon after. Cannondale was still losing money on each bike they sold, and the improvements in the X440 were not enough to remove the stigma the company had earned itself. Fast forward a couple of years, and Cannondale made some fixes (and increased displacement) to create the X440. Not to mention, the electric start was useless when the bike got hot, and there was no kickstarter backup. Pre-production units showed lots of little problems, and Cannondale rushed the bike to market, where it was revealed to be heavy, undersprung, and fairly unreliable. Unfortunately, all this tech (especially in the engine) caused engineering problems that Cannondale struggled to solve. Features like a backwards cylinder, an upfront airbox, electric start, and fuel injection took several more years to make it to the dirt bikes of the big 5 manufacturers. In certain ways, it was a decade ahead of the times. The company said all the right things when developing the bike – Dirt Rider magazine even named it the bike of the year two years before it was released! Part of this was because of the features. The X440 and X400 were spec’d with premium components, like Ohlins forks and rear shock, Magura controls, and Fuel Injection. $80 million later, the company declared bankruptcy, having left behind an interesting story of what happens when you can’t live up to the hype. In the late 90s, Cannondale tried to move into motorsports, with an off-road bike and an ATV. The Cannondale X440 was the swansong of Cannondale motorcycles, a subsidiary of the well-known American bicycling company.
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