Bonzo Banana

That certainly isn't true maybe I was over-stating it but you have gone completely the opposite way. If its made by Giant it will be getting their quality control, their materials and much of the design. Prototype testing will be done by the manufacturer you can't have thousands of bike frames going back and forth from Germany to Taiwan/China. From what I've seen in the past many bicycle brands have their bikes fully certified in China or Taiwan by CNAS approved test laboratories even those that claim a high design input. I think when Canyon moved away from carbon frame manufacture by Giant to Quest Composites we have seen a huge reduction in quality with many more carbon frame issues even some frames failing on the first ride so the actual manufacturer is extremely important. It's not just about someone knocking up designs in Germany it has to be engineered by the manufacturer itself because they have to made it in a way compatible with their machinery and processes you can't just negate the importance of the manufacturer in the whole process they will always be the most critical and important part. When you look at many brands that do no manufacturing themselves and are really importers you see often their designs radically change as they move from one factory to a cheaper factory and unsurprisingly their designs look like minor variations of the actual factories frame designs. Yes Canyon do innovative new frame designs but lets face it their designs are much more prone to failure have much lower weight limits and shorter warranties such will be the case with new designs. I think their designs are inferior to those of more established brands in engineering but commercially superior because they are often more stylish unique designs. On most reasonable criteria the Canyon designs are clearly inferior to Giant's own designs but I still say how each manufacturer handles these weaker more stylised products is critical and Giant sourced carbon frames were superior. Tern who had a huge history of recalls with many frames failing were sourcing frames from a wide range of frame manufacturers often the same basic design but some of the factories had made the frames far weaker than other factories, some were engineered stronger by the manufacturer and were not effected by the recall. It wasn't that they had manufactured below Tern's specification the failing frames were actually made to it, it was just other manufacturers had improved/strengthened the design and the solution was to stop using the factories that made the frames to their spec and incorporate the improvements of the better manufacturer. There was a Japanese report condemning the Tern bike as unsafe and unfit for sale and that is from a country where the people are much lighter. I just think its a ridiculous assumption to negate the engineering required by the actual manufacturer especially someone like Giant who are the biggest bicycle manufacturer in the world by revenue.

Maybe when Canyon offer the same weight limits and warranty as Giant and don't have regular forum postings about failing bikes and poor customer service I will think differently.

Steve B.