TandemGeek

Disclaimer: While I've ridden and even owned examples of these three brands of tandems, I don't presently own or have any business interest in them. I'm merely sharing what I've learned over the years from various souces, including many personal contacts with the owners of Santana and Co-Motion, both of whom I like and consider friends.

Santana makes very nice tandems, no doubt about it. However, notwithstanding a different philosophy with regard to steering geometry and frame stiffness, a Co-Motion tandem is just as good as a Santana and comes with a lot less baggage in terms of proprietary or hard-to-come-by components. Also, both Santana and Co-Motion have well-qualified European distributors: this is a link to Marc de Rochefort's website; he's Co-Motion's European distributor: http://www.velotransatlantique.com/index.html. Again, the biggest discriminator would be your preference for handling and stiffness. For very large teams, perhaps the Santana could be a better choice as the steering is less sensitive and the bike could prove to be easier to drive in a straight line. However, this is all very subjective.

Cannondale, on the other hand, is by no means a "cheap" tandem: they are simply less expensive than similarly equipped tandems sold by smaller volume, tandem specialty builders who don't enjoy the economies of scale that C'dale does. As for rear wheel spacing, Cannondale only ever used 135mm rear spacing on their road tandems once back in the early 90's and while they used 140mm for a while they adopted the industry-wide tandem spacing of 145mm. A properly built, evenly tensioned and distressed 145mm wheel will be every bit as durable and perform as well as a 160mm wheel built to equally exacting specifications for tension and distress. Conversely, a 145mm or 160mm spaced rear wheel that is not properly built or that can't retain even tension will both fail just as readily as the other. Santana and Co-Motion do get the nod for using 40h wheels as their standard fitment relative to your specific wheel needs, but 48h wheelsets should be readily available from either and a good Cannondale dealer should also be able to upgrade the stock wheels. It's also worthwhile to point out that the C'dale Jumbo/Large has one of the longest stock rear stoker compartments (29.1") offered by any of the tandem builders, whereas anything longer than the stock stoker compartments used by Santana (27.75") or Co-Motion (28.5") will put you into a custom bike. Mind you, we're only talking about differences of .5" to 1.25", but it's worth noting. Cannondales are actually ideal bikes for very large teams who need the stiffest frame they can get and the steering geometry falls right in the middle ground between what's used by Santana for every road tandem/fork combination and what Co-Motion uses for its chomoly fork-equipped tandems. As you move onto Co-Motion's racing tandems with carbon forks, the steering gets even more aggressive which may or may not appeal to a very large team.

I'm not pushing C'dale, but I would say they need to be given their due for producing an excellent product for a very attractive price point: you get a lot of bang for the buck. The same is true for Trek's tandems which also happen to feature progressively longer stoker compartments for their larger tandems. No, neither C'dale or Trek produce custom-sized frames, but that's not their market segment. However, if a C'dale frame would fit "well enough" a new or used model might be a pretty smart way to evaluate if tandem cycling is something you'll enjoy / do enough to warrant the significant investment required to put yourself on a custom-sized Santana, Co-Motion, or other premium brand-name tandem with components of the same quality.

Again, Santana makes a great tandem, but so do many other companies and from all accounts Wolfgang is a great guy to work with. However, IMHO, it sounds like you've been given an overdose of Santana's marketing material which is anything but objective and, in some cases, downright misleading: that's why it's called marketing material. Their "test ride program" is also excellent and truly does get new tandem teams started off the right way. Co-Motion's authorized dealers use a similar approach but, with Cannondale and Trek, not so much and that's what limits their market share and price structure: they're not tandem specialty dealers.