Originally Posted by johnny99
I think Merida (a big Taiwanese bike company, similar to Giant) actually owns a big chunk of Specialized. All Specialized bikes are made at the Merida factories in Taiwan, except the cheapest ones may be outsourced to mainland China.
Last time I checked, Giant did make most (maybe all) aluminum bikes for Trek. Giant has factories in both Taiwan and mainland China. I think some of the cheapest Treks are made in mainland China. My Trek dealer claimed that Trek bike quality is higher than Giant, because Trek has their own quality control people on-site at the Giant factory. Who knows?
its Trek rep bs - they used to say Giant composite frames has clay inside (when Giant had more advanced monoscope construction and Trek is/was still using lugs with prefab tubing).
A comparison between Trek's 1000, 1200, all the way to 2200 alum frames.... with Giant's OCR and TCR alloy frames... and you'll see comparable and even Giant alum tubing fabrication suepriority with hydroforming.... Trek's alloy bikes just look like straight gauge tubing welded. Not that different from any other. (Not saying its bad - but it certain'y doesn't say superiority).