Originally Posted by cornucopia72
Seriously, is there any hard numbers to back Rudy's statement?
No... Santana and most other builders don't generally release their production numbers. Santana has gone so far to note it has built something over 20,000 tandems back in the late 90's but even those numbers are frequently called into question as you can see from this posting at Hobbes back in 2003:
http://search.bikelist.org/getmsg.as...10302.0109.eml
The closest I've ever seen to any hard numbers came in the form of this snippet from an
article on Co-Motion that ran in 2001:
Originally Posted by Sunday Oregonian
Co-Motion said it makes about 800 tandems and 200 single bikes a year. Burley, which also makes recumbent bikes, rainwear, and trailers for hauling kids or gear, said it produces 1,300 to 1,400 tandems a year. Green Gear said it makes about 260 tandems a year. Santana, which exclusively makes tandems, would not release its figures.
Since that time Co-Motion's annual tandem output has continued to grow by leaps and bounds as their brand name and reputation for building excellent performance oriented tandems continues to be more widely recognized. I've always assumed Santana's output to be fairly close to Burley's so at this point I've got to believe that Co-Motion and Santana are "close".
Originally Posted by cornucopia72
I would have thought that Santana sold close to half of all the mid to high end tandems sold in the US.
Again, as noted above, they have a significant share of the market, but Co-Motion, Burley, Cannondale, and Trek have enjoyed strong sales over the years. Moreover, while many of the brands I mentioned may be unfamiliar to you, I've only listed the brands that I've actually put my hands on or seen at tandem rallies and events and that are still being built. While many of these lesser known brands come from smaller volume or custom builders, in aggregate they do tend to chip away at the market. However, what's most notable about these off-brands is that these tend to be the tandems that people purchase after they've learned what they like and don't like about their first tandem.
Yes, Santana sells a lot of tandems and, yes, since the early 90's they've all had 160mm rear spacing. However, most of Santana's customers bought into the one-side arguments put forward in Santana's marketing literature and only learn "the rest of the story" as they interact with other teams who ride tandems produced by other builders that embrace different design specs and discover that there are a variety of different ways to design reliable tandems that perform well.
Bottom Line: Santana makes an excellent product... but so do many other builders. Ride what you like and like what you ride.