I dropped into a bike shop for some other stuff and in the clearance/used rack was a titanium Motobecane Le Champion. I'd never seen a Bikes Direct product in the flesh before. This one I'd say was a few years old, maybe 2011 judging by it's graphics. I didnt have time to eyeball it closely- what stuck out was it did look to have the SRAM Rival drivetrain and Ritchey seat. Looked pretty clean, nearly new. Obviously I knew it was a BD product, but only asked if was titanium (of course it was!). The guy said he had a lot of room on the price (tag had $1199), but was a little coy on what that meant- I sensed I'd have to be ready to talk turkey to get the answer.

Looking things up up on it, I found this post in MTBR: I discovered who manufactures all Motobecane Titanium Frames- Mtbr.com There is link to the frame maker- pretty interesting.

Anyway, it looks like it would fit, so I'm going give it a closer gander and a test ride. Probably would satisfy a lot of my curiosity about BD.

Thoughts on any of this?