Fun Stuff > CHATTER
Bickering about bicycles, now with occasional tips about motorised vehicles
jwhouk:
(does the conversion)
Wait - about US$2,200 for a BICYCLE?
A high-end TREK bicycle comes in at less than that... though at $1,979, with tax added it probably nicks that total.
Yeesh. Sorry, I'm not buying a bike like that for THAT much.
The Seldom Killer:
It's matter of you get what you pay for.
My previous geared bike was an aluminium frame with carbon forks and (subject to several component changes) lasted me 10 years through 8-10 thousand miles a year and multiple crashes, bumps, bounces and other rough handling. It cost me £350 and it finally succumbed to metal fatigue.
To buy the same bike now would cost about £800. The extra £400 is going to get me a far lighter, stronger frame, higher quality components and a set of hand built wheels which are always better than factory built. In the current market, what I'm buying should cost me at least another £300-£400 so is very much a bargain. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't buy the components and build this up from scratch for cheaper, a realistic option for more expensive bikes or bikes of lower quality.
It's worth bearing in mind that this isn't going to be a pub bike or a commuter or a bike for pottering around town or up quiet little country lanes on a Sunday afternoon. This is a bike for adventures and epic quests in far away places. Now if you were buying a motorbike straight off the showroom floor for adventures and epic quests, would you really only spend £1200 on it?
hedgie:
I dunno, a friend of mine got his for about that much, and it was totally new, just the previous model year, so it was heavily discounted. And it was a rather nice bike. Not quite the sex on wheels that Ducatis are, but still damned nice.
jwhouk:
If I'm going to spend that much on a bike, it's going to be something like a Rhoads Car.
bhtooefr:
--- Quote from: jwhouk on 31 Jul 2014, 23:21 ---A high-end TREK bicycle comes in at less than that... though at $1,979, with tax added it probably nicks that total.
--- End quote ---
That's... not high-end, and Trek's got a bike over $10k.
$2000 is very much mid-range.
The trick is that bicycles, especially high-performance road bikes, have to have far more advanced engineering in their frames and some components, than a car, to be sufficiently light-weight yet strong. And, they have to do it without the economies of scale of car production, unless they're a single-speed rod brake roadster (at which point you can get a Flying Pigeon in China for $30, but you end up having to rebuild the thing yourself as soon as you buy it).
And, the Rhoades Cars are incredibly heavy junk, as I understand.
I'll note that I paid $1100 for my recumbent trike, and it's very much low-end, heavy, flexy, and with cheap components.
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