I started tbis thread in part because of my grandfather's rather strong political views about import vs. domestic. We've had to agree to disagree here. He's an old B-17 bomber pilot, flew the Berlin Airlift, then SAC, etc. Really hates the Germans and Japanese, or at least he'll tell anyone within earshot what he thinks.

An irony is that until recently his daily driver was a 2001 Chevy Tracker, which is made by.....Suzuki! When I asked him this he countered that yes, he knew it was made by Suzuki but "the profits stay in this country."

Additionally, he supports the auto bailout, etc (with much cursing and bad grace), I took the stance that if we wanted to compete we should have thought about building better cars back when we had a chance.....now its too late, and I think that GM and Chrysler will both sink no matter how much money we throw at them.

Okay, back to bicycles....

It seems that labor and commodity costs are the main driving factors in bike prices (which I do think are cruelly expensive in many cases), but we cyclists can be a mighty superstitious lot, and also mighty nostalgic as well. Even more so with European brands, I suspect. I confess that I've been thinking of getting a Masi fixed gear bike, which happens to be produced in Taiwan AFAIK, and have long wanted to get a Battaglin road bike, specifically the Stealth Rival (AL frame, yeah I was an old Stephen Roche fan back in the days), but I'm curious as to whether that particular model is actually made in Italy or not (the asking price seems pretty low compared to Italy's very high wage/labor costs).

I do think that it's pretty much boiling down to buying whatever floats your boat as long as you don't get something really cheap and crappy, it's all good.

Tom