dgross

I'm about to buy my 11-year old daughter her first real bike. I decided to go LBS instead of mail order and I'm down to the Trek 1000 ($599) or the Giant OCR2 ($649 on sale). They are at two different stores, and they sized her to a 52 cm Trek and the other store sized her to a small Giant. The Giant is only available in small, and they have 3 for sale. Because she's probably gonna grow (she's 5'3" with 30" inseam, mom's 5'10" with 32" inseam) I'm trying to get a little big to grow but not too big to cause control problems. Is the small Giant equivalent to a 50-52 cm Trek? I'm leaning toward the Giant because the better components (Tiagra, 105) than the Trek (Sora, Tiagra). She test road the Giant and it felt OK, but she's never ridden anything like that so she really can't say what's feels right or not.

K6-III

At 5'3", 52cm would be way too big!

I know you want a little big, but this is way too much. You can't really skimp by more than 2cm.

At her hight, something around 48-50cm top tube would be much more appropriate. You'll probably have her start with a 60mm stem with lots of rise to bring the handlebars closer to compensate for the larger size.

Try looking at the Trek 1000 WSD 50cm. With the WSD, it is women's specific geometry, so the top tube is a bit shorter...