Originally Posted by sced

The bottom line is that quality in very instance based and has nothing to do with country of origin.

The Italians have been the most notorious liars about the "Made in Italy" thing, kind of like a BikesDirect nation, but they seem to have smelled the coffee in recent years. There have been a number of mentions of this in Road Bike Action magazine. The Italian bike industry was decimated by Asian manufacturing prowess and the transition to carbon fiber, which requires technology an order of magnitude more sophisticated than the Italian craftsman tradition could muster...at low cost. Seeking survival, some Italian companies outsourced production to other countries, but still slapped the "Made in Italy" labels on their products, perhaps with a little intervening finish work before exportation.