Good answer! But in the spirit of the analogy, you would be scoffing at the high-end botique bike that really performed no better than the Trek, which is kind of the reverse of what you initially proposed.

The problem with the car analogy is that with cars, it's the car that matters, and while the driver makes a huge difference, he's not going to make a Taurus accelerate like a Ferrari. But on a bike, the rider can definitely make the Trek go like the botique bike.