actually, the road bike are different from the crappy 'messenger' bikes that they sell. The frames are very light and well built and the components are top notch. The bike came with a full ultegra group with very light ritchey wcs wheels.
Most of the people on the road forums agree that its a great bike at an incredible price, they actually were on sale for 1595 for a couple of weeks... thats about the cost of components alone.
Yeah this bike is one of the stiffer ones in the bb, with no sway or creak whatsoever no matter how hard I mash on a hill, even big guys agree. So I'm super happy with that bike, it's like a 4grand bike for half the price.
but I know what you mean, 'motobecane' can mean bad things, luckily not in this case.