Originally Posted by
whatsmyname
As has been said by others - Motobecane was a mixed bag and there was a lot of dreck pumped out, just like Peugeot and Raleigh and others at the time. European junk shops and markets are knee-deep in them.
To me, it's sort of surprising that BikesDirect bothered to buy the brand for the US: anyone who knows the brand will know bikes and most likely know that either they weren't that great or they collapsed and were brought back to life, and anyone why doesn't know the brand won't care.
Wow, there's a lot of revisionism going on here. Motobecane, Raleigh, and Peugeot were no more "mixed bag" then Trek or Giant is today. They made models at different price points for different consumers. And let's be clear, the cheapest Peugeot road bike you could get in the States back in the mid 70's was a good 10 lbs. lighter than a Schwinn Varsity. I owned one. Why do you think so many European bikes were imported?
Mr IGH compared 70's Motobecanes to Treks and Fujis. Trek barely existed as a company at all in the 70s. They sold mid to higher end framesets to bikes enthusiasts. They didn't start selling complete bikes until 1978 and even then you'd be hard pressed to find one outside of the Midwest. They were a boutique brand. As far as Fuji goes, yeah they made decent bikes back in the 70s but certainly not world beaters. A lot of people didn't care for the geometry for many of of the Japanese bikes and found the ride to be kind of dead. I wouldn't rank them above Moto at all. Miyata mades some nice bikes.
If you consider dreck to be the likes of Murray and Huffy, then no, even at the low end Motobecane made much better bikes. If 40 years from now you look back at the low end Treks and Giants of today and consider them to be dreck, then that's probably a good comparison of relative quality of 40 year old low end Motos.
Oh, and just because a company fails doesn't mean they made junk. Suntour went bankrupt too.