Yeah, I stay away from the sleazy companies that do that. There's this one fly-by-night company called Trek, which also pretends to have separate companies that build bikes called Gary Fisher and Lemond, but if you do a little looking you find that they're really all the same people.

Seriously, this has been a normal business practice for, oh, at least 120 years. It's been less noticeable in bikes, but more so in other products - read up on the history of Aeolian-American Corporation if you want to be enlightened about how long it's been going on, and how prevalent it is. It's typical for products in which tradition plays a strong role, and we cyclists have only recently (20 years or so) begun to put much thought into what's traditional, as aluminum and CF have overtaken steel as the prevalent frame material, TIG welding has replaced brazed lugs, and we've been presented with the ever-increasing numbers of gears in our indexed shifting systems.

Is it misleading? Perhaps, if you don't do some minor homework - but that's sort of what marketing is all about, anyway. As far as Surly making it clear that they are "part of QBP," they don't - they simply state that they sell through distributors (presumably they're referring to QBP) so there's no such thing as an "authorized Surly dealer." I'd hardly take that to mean that they're owned by, or manufactured for, QBP - and in fact, I question whether that is even the case.

Oh, and for the poster who claimed that they must be building junk because they don't warranty their frames for a lifetime: Surly warranties its frames for three years (compared with BD's one year) - does that mean that Surly is building junk, too?