Originally Posted by
jnewkirk77
My question is: Why do these bikes have a bad reputation? I think if they survive 28 years like this one has, cheap or not, we should honor that. Just my 2 cents.
In my experience, having bought and sold well over 500 vintage bikes, survival has NOTHING to do with quality. Some of the highest, top of the line vintage bikes I have found (think Italian brands) were in terrible condition. Survival has a lot more to do with how the bike was stored, rather than its quality.
A Chevy Vega was a total POS. If you found one that somehow survived, it would still be a POS. And today, if someone took a Walmart Magna or similar, stuck it in a basement, and pulled it out 30 years later, it would be a survivor for sure, but it would still be a POS. Realize bikes are all built to meet a price point. As this price level gets lower and lower, a lot of corners have to be cut to get the cost low enough. That is true today and it was true in the past.
Reputations are earned. Now it is true some of the bad brands had an occasional nice bike here and there, but they ruined the brand's reputation by pumping out millions of crappy bikes. So there definitely is the occasional gem (think Serotta built Huffy!!). And decent 3 speeds were made/sold by several brands, including the department store ones (I have had a few Free Spirit 3 speeds that were made In Austria, and pretty nice).