Originally Posted by
ScottCommutes
My understanding is that some carmakers enter into multi-year deals with parts supplies where the cost per part keeps dropping.a few percent each year. The logic is that the supplies will surely find some efficiencies each year as they are making all these parts.
Buying a new bike is a combination of three things - a frame you like, a good deal (negotiated by the manufacturer) on a complete set of parts chosen, and a bunch of non-factory service (assembly, etc) that gets done at your local shop.
I continue to feel like people in the "good old days" could build highly affordable bikes themselves by shopping for deals on parts. Over the years, the manufacturers wised up to this and designed bikes that can accept fewer and fewer parts.
This reminds me of a guitarist I used to know. Whenever he had trouble figuring out the chords to some song he wanted the band to cover, he'd say, "They deliberately made it complicated to make it hard for guys like us in cover bands to play it."
Nope. They wrote it that way to compete in the marketplace.
And bike companies don't do what they do to make it hard for us to put bikes together from the frame up. That's not remotely on their radar. They do what they do to try to stay a step ahead of their competition. They're certainly not stopping any of us from buying a frame from QBP or Rivendell and building it up with friction down tube shifters.