My wife and I have a pair of '97 TREK 820's we bought new, her's a 16" and mine a 22" frame. Her's had a "Made in Taiwan" sticker on the lower head tube (since removed) but mine has "MADE in the USA" and a small American flag UNDER the clear coat on the lower seat tube and there was a noticeable difference in the quality of some of the hardware. They had the same components, wheels, etc. but some of the small stuff was definitely different. I though TREK had farmed out all their low end MTB's to Giant by then. Both have been re-invented a couple times over the years, only the frame is original on mine and on the wife's the frame and fork so it's really a moot point but is there a chance mine was actually a Wisconsin built frame or was it a Giant frame assembled in the US?

Sprocket: Share

I looked up your bike and based on the frameset/component quality and time period being well after 1984 when they switched I would guess that that would be a no.

I believe they only built their carbon bikes and maybe some aluminum here, because Cr-Mo/Hi-Ten bikes were just too cost-prohibitive to make here. My 80's Raleigh had a similar thing on it, where they were trying to sell them as "US Made" bikes that actually came from Taiwan. :/

All together Trek's a good brand and the bikes they sold were sturdy and well above the quality of most other brands. It was still a good choice then and is still a good choice. Hell there are many great Taiwan-built bikes by made by many other brands now.

I have a 2002 820st that is still in excellent condition. Front shock works ok, brakes and shifting is flawless. My only point of improvement is stepping up the knobby 1.95s to a 2.5 for deeper snow. Decent bikes.

Perhaps the larger one was "assembled" in the US justifying the decal, and explaining the slightly different component mix. Another possibility was they were both sold at the same time but yours was a year earlier?

Or maybe the less-common huge size was done in a small batch

Thanks all, I was just curious, we're still enjoying them as much as we did 18 years ago.