Originally Posted by EvilV
Yes.
If you could walk into a shop and leave on the same day with a steel Brompton sporting V brakes, a seven speed nexus hub, lights, stand, rack, mudguards, kevlar tyres, alloy chain tensioner etc, etc, and only have to hand over £325 ($650) I don't think that any of us would be discussing the strangely named Flamingo Bike at all. The fact that in Britain you have to wait up to 16 - 20 weeks to get a half speced out bike (beautifully hand brazed though it may be) means that an impudent copyist like Grace Gallant enterprises can make a killing. The other thing is that GG are quick on their feet. They have problems with plastic chain tensioners and make them out of alluminium instead; the original brakes they copied are crap so they whisk them off and put on vbrakes 'tout suite'. That's the way a good company does things. Bromptpon just carry on and on in the same old way. Maybe that makes them classic, but maybe not.
PS. Two more bombs in London will mean a huge hike in demand for Bromptons as people will be less happy about going into subterranean railway systems - a demand they can't meet. If I was Anita, and if I had the money to hand, I'd be ordering another container load of pretty little re badged Flamingos right now. I might even just sell them as Flamingos. Why not. The graphics look fine to me.
Well said, exactly. I think the fact that they would go through the hassle of shipping a bike half way around the world to an individual says something too.
I thought at first $150 was too much to spend on just a shipping charge. Then I remembered that it cost me almost that much to have a used Rans Status packed and shipped from Colorado to New York State.
The seller didn't want to bother, so he had done at a bike shop. The packing was horrible I might add, basically just stuck in an old Sun recumbent box. Frame was wrapped with paper but no packing to keep it from moving around in the box. I think they charged me $40 for that and another $75 or so for UPS.
My mind tends not to remember things like that:-)