Originally Posted by
Steely Dan
I understand that we all live within different economic realities, but from the perspective of my station in life, I absolutely do not classify the $2,000 purchase of my BD.com Motobecane as "cheap". I do consider the purchase to be an incredibly good value, but in my world, 2,000 bones is a significant amount of dinero regardless of what it's being spent on.
My titanium frame is a work of art to admire (the welds are like metallic pornography) and an utter joy to ride. I've had it for over a year now and put over 5,000 miles on it, and do not expect I will ever outgrow it. Failing a wreck, I do not anticipate ever needing to replace it. It is an excellent frame; the only thing it really lacks is snob appeal.
I would say the same thing. I also don't consider my $1500 BD cheap. I'll put it next to any bike at any LBS in the same price range. I have a Ti/Rival lechamp. Although I've only put a few hundred miles on it as it's pretty new, it's an excellent bike. The build quality is as good as I've seen. The parts/spec list is also very good value. The fact that I bought it close to the price an LBS shop pays for a similar bike doesn't bother me in the least.
My wife and I also have BD 29er MTBs. Mine has well over a thousand miles on it and has also been an excellent value. It's an XT bike and performs as well as any other XT 29er. It just costs a bit less, but comes with no service. I'm ok with that.
Although we like to dream that there is all this really complex engineering in our rides, the reality is that bikes are very simple machines. A much much more complex motorcycle can be purchased new for less than many bicycles. A bicycle can be entirely assembled from a pile of parts in a few hours (except the chain if you had 500 pieces...). There are relatively little material costs. The profit margins in bicycles are HUGE. When you have a product that requires roughly $150-200 in raw materials $100 in labor and sells for $5k+, there's no reason to think a half priced bike can't be built with the same quality.