There's a particular kind of brand loyalty that only exists in niche sports, and Answer Racing had it in motocross for about fifteen years. Not the loud, logo-everywhere loyalty — the quiet kind. The kind where a guy at the track would notice your pants, nod, and that was the whole conversation.
Photo by Martin Pettitt / Flickr / CC BY 2.0
Answer showed up in the early 90s and immediately positioned themselves as the working rider's brand. While Fox was signing factory deals and AXO was importing Italian design sensibility, Answer was in the booth at Hangtown selling gear that fit like it was supposed to and cost what it was supposed to. Their catalog wasn't aspirational. It was functional.
The thing about 90s motocross gear is that it existed in this incredible sweet spot between the plain leather-and-denim era of the 70s/80s and the full-graphic-sublimation era of the 2000s. Answer's colorways from this period are genuinely beautiful — bold panel blocking, clean lines, colors that pop without screaming. They looked fast standing still.
The brand's approach to construction was similarly no-nonsense. Where other companies were experimenting with lightweight materials that fell apart after a season, Answer stuck with proven fabrics and reinforced the hell out of every seam. Their pants were famous for lasting. Not famous like magazine-cover famous — famous like your-buddy-at-the-track famous.
Answer eventually got absorbed into the larger consolidation of moto brands that happened in the 2000s, but their 90s output remains some of the most rideable gear ever made. If you find a pair from this era in good condition, you've found something that was built by people who rode what they sold.
We've got one pair from this exact era in the shop. Vintage Answer Racing pants, original colorway, no damage. See it here.
Related Reading
- Fox Racing in the 90s: When Motocross Gear Became Culture
- Fox Racing Made Twenty Shades of Blue and Every One of Them Sold
- The Quiet Fox: When Motocross Brands Made Subtle Gear
Header image: Photo: Herbert Krickl, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons