Originally Posted by
Ron Damon
I've said this before and I'll say it again at the risk of perturbing the Dahon devotees here. Buying a Dahon today, unless it is the more unique models like the Curl, Vybe, etc., doesn't make sense because for less money you can buy essentially the same bike from other brands or...or... here's the kick in the chin...you can build or have built a better specced bike based on an FnHon or Litepro frame for the same and perhaps even less money. That applies too to the crowd favorite the Dahon K3/K3+.
I get what you are saying; frame like Fhon etc, 16" or 20" wheelset can be found cheaply but, this is something that works for enthusiasts, people who read these fora and understand what is needed to build a folding bike.
Dahon may still have a place with generic bike shop who sell bike to people new to folding bike. I think one of the big issue of Dahon is that the founder is getting old and it seems there is nobody to carry on and the range is pretty poor and not well specced.
Meanwhile, Tern is consolidating and Brompton is becoming less "boutique".
Originally Posted by
Duragrouch
Dahon needs to have great designs, at a *slight* premium, for a known brand, coming fully assembled and not parts, and, *they need to provide excellent customer service, WHICH. THEY. DON'T.* I had a cracked frame, ridden totally on smooth roads, and they blew me off, said the seatpost was too high (it wasn't, I'm short for an american), and I was too heavy (not, I was 50 lbs less than their rated max. The FRAME. On the interwebby, word travels at the speed of electrons. That'll kill Dahon as much as anything else.
This was the same issue with Tern. I recall that that when Dahon and Tern were "battling" in the late 2000 early 2010, Tern were terrible for frame cracking and not honouring warranty T&C. Both company frameset came from the same company but I remember talk about poor QC. At the time, Dahon was leading the charge with interesting thing like jetstream, MuSL, speed TT etc. at the time, I was in the market for a 3rd folder and I went for a dahon because of the poor reputation of tern at the time. Tern fixed the quality issues and carried on with interesting things like the X18, X10, X11. their minivelo never worked.
Dahon could try to re-invent itself with minivelos like the dash but the market is small or the clint but this one is too expensive.
May be they should team up with a kids bike company so that they get better buying power on components and then can sell a folding bike for the same price range as a kid bike $300-400.
The dahon dash and the frog 52/55/53 are pretty much the same in base models (20" wheelset with quando hub, shimano altus groupset, 27.2 seatpost, tektro brakes.), the only difference is the frameset. From a logistic point of view, it is no different than having different bike size for a given model.