Hermes

Here is a picture of the bike being discussed. The main features are the frame, Roval wheels and E-tap group set. What I find interesting is that it is marketed as a UCI compliant 6.8 kg bike. This bike is not necessarily the lightest a rode bike can be but due to disc brakes and 50 mm Roval wheels and 28 mm tires, 6.8Kg as sold may be excellent. I have the 50 mm Roval wheels and really like them. They are fast, smooth and excellent on windy descents. I have the E-tap electronic shifting and prefer it to the Dura Ace electronic.

Hermes

big john You beat me by a few minutes posting the pic. I found it interesting that in over page after page of discussion, no one talks about the bike very much or posts a pic.

Koyote

Yes. Easily.

Iride01 

Maybe not by looking at a picture. However if you let me ride them I probably could. The cheaper Specialized Tarmac I bought is probably 2½ - 3 lbs heavier than the S-Works Tarmac that was out at the same time.

If you were to suddenly give me that S-Works model that was $12,0000 back then, I'd be busting all the personal KOM's I have along the routes I ride. So yes I could tell just by that alone. However I expect the road feel will be different too with better wheels that give a better feel of the road which would likely give me more confidence to take turns at even higher speeds than I do now.

Most of whether a 14,0000 dollar bike is worth it or not will depend quite a bit on the type of riding one does. If we all just rode our bikes leisurely around the block once a week, probably not worth it except for the wow factor to others.

terrymorse 

Great idea. Only problem is then you'd be a Tesla owner.

And that's a deal breaker.

rosefarts

If I were to go big spender on a bike, even with handpicked parts, brand new, and not on sale the price would be far below $14.

That Rodriguez would be near the top of my list for road. If I were to go gravel without a budget, it would probably be the Ritte Satyr in titanium.

Either one, spec’d with Campy EPS for the road and Ekar for gravel, would probably undershoot the price target by $3-4k.

I believe that there are $4-5k wheelsets available that could dramatically pump the price up. I also think that those do not come on a “stock” bike at any price.

$14k seems inflated to me. Im not the target market and I’m not offended by the price. I can’t see what it offers that $10k doesn’t though.

VegasJen

If so, the manufacturers won't sell any. The old racing expression is "Speed costs. How fast do you want to go?" I don't see how bikes are any different. When you get to a certain point, every gram, or every 10th of a MPH/KPH increases the cost of the equipment by a factor. So if you're a piker, like me, a bike that improves your pace from 17mph to 18mph might only cost you a couple grand. But if you're competing at a high level, it might cost you that same couple grand to improve from 25.1mph to 25.2mph.
This is a true statement. However, a good rider on a good bike will still be faster than the same good rider on a crappy bike. In my triathlons, I've passed people on high end Felt and Canyon bikes, but I've also been passed by better riders on older Lemonds and Schwinns.

terrymorse 

Are there still any sub-UCI limit bikes from the major manufacturers?

Yes, you can get below the limit with some component swaps. But as shipped?

OK, I found one--just barely below the limit: Scott Addict RC Ultimate, 6.7 kg, $15,999.99.




Still heavier than my 2011 Addict, which was 6.5 kg as shipped (and less than half the price). With some component swaps (wheels, cranks), it was easy to get mine below 6.3 kg (even after adding power pedals).

3alarmer 

...this is the exact question all the people who bought them before the discounts kicked in are asking.

livedarklions

It's all fun and games until the armed UCI agents start pounding down your door.

tomato coupe

Tarmac? TCR?

icemilkcoffee 

Guess what? There are objective reasons for why Dura Ace costs that much. Shimano used to publish a chart showing the materials used in each groupset, and you can see exactly how your money went towards titanium parts, forged aluminum parts, ball bearings instead of brass bushings, etc. And you can also see the additionally matching done to lighten the cranks and brake calipers, the 2-piece bonded hollow crank arm, carbon reinforced hollow chain rings, etc. So it’s not just ‘yeah, that’s what people will pay. What’s it to you?’
At no point was I justifying paying for this bike. I was explaining why the bike costs so much.

Now you are just arguing for the sake of arguing. Obviously ‘made in USA’ applies to the parts made by Specialized.

Feel free to rebut that assertion. You go ahead and count the parts count for a motorcycle and compare it with a bicycle.
Anyone who has worked on both motorcycles and bikes knows that motorcycles are vastly more complex with much more engineering and machining on every part. The much vaunted disc brakes on bikes is roughly at the 1975 level for motorcycles. The Di2 brains is rudimentary compared to the engine/traction control/speed shifting ECUs on the Motorcycles.

Anyways feel free to debate that premise. That would be an interesting debate. Whereas ‘it is what it is’ is not an interesting topic for debate.

terrymorse 

Specialized advertises the Tarmac as "barely UCI legal".

About their Aethos, Specialized brags "we broke those sacred UCI rules too...The lightest disc road frame ever produced with builds as light as 5.9kg".

So there's another UCI-illegal bike.

big john

2 riders in my club have the Aethos. I don't know how much they spent but neither went full weight-weenie. They both say they love the bike and I believe them.

t2p

one of your old bikes is a Seven ? Seven is a sweet bike

some of the original Merlin people started Seven and continue to this day

A350driver

The Global Cycling Network boys have put out some great You Tube videos comparing cheap bikes to expensive bikes, check them out.

tomato coupe

Some Tarmac are at 6.7. Aethos seemed obvious, so I didn't mention it. Also Canyon Ultimate CFR.

kcinnick

They simply are not worth $14k in materials, no where near that. What is good about those bleeding edge bikes is that those features that don't cost a lot in materials will make their way down to lower and lower level bikes and will help everyone. I see motoGP bikes are brought up a lot in this thread, and well, the same thing happens in motorcycles. Now you have $10k bikes coming with IMUs with cornering ABS that use to only be in prototype form on $150k+ professional bikes. So even though that bike isn't worth the materials, and isn't worth it to the vast majority of the people on planet earth, that bike existing is good for all of us.

t2p

advanced engineering and materials have associated costs

one part on an advanced combat aircraft engine can cost $ 1 million

one part

big john

Yep. I bought it used and don't know what year it was made but I've had it almost 11 years and have put over 50K miles on it. Lots of parts have been replaced and some need to be replaced now.

big john

I've followed motocross and supercross off and on since about 1971. The Japanese manufacturers started getting involved about then and they would hire the best riders and then build bikes for them. These "works" bikes were said to cost $150K each when stock bikes were around $2K. There were teams of high paid engineers designing and building the works bikes and their work eventually trickled down to production bikes.

I was at the USGP in Carlsbad one year when a rider won (I think it was Ake Jonsson) on a stock Maico. They sold the bike after the race to prove it was stock. Someone got it for $1800. Roger DeCoster was a Suzuki works rider that day and he had a crash and was not a factor.

t2p

that Seven is a keeper

reminds me of a friend that drives the Lexus top LS models - LS400 - LS430 - LS460 ...

he purchases them used at a good price / with a lot of miles (100K +) but in great shape and then doubles the mileage before passing the car to kid / relative and then moving on to the next LS

he had one LS with well over 200K miles - passed it on to his youngest kid - that kid drove it from PA to the west coast (UCLA) and it has made at least one trip back to PA

livedarklions

You know what's not an interesting topic for debate? Whether a bicycle can "possibly" be worth $14,000.
Since "worth" is a subjective value, that really is arguing for the sake of arguing.

You've so obviously deliberately distorted everything I said that I'm not going to bother addressing all your pointless quibbles and just make the following two rather obvious points:
1. The value of an object may have absolutely nothing to do with the costs of its individual components. For example, a few dollars worth of paint and canvas can be used to create a work of art for which someone will pay 10s of millions of dollars.
2. The fact that Shimano Dura-Ace costs so much because it's made of x is still not any kind of answer as to why it is or isn't "worth it" especially when there's a lot of very good somewhat cheaper alternatives.

As to your assertions regarding the comparison between motorcycles and bicycles, counting numbers of parts is really besides the point. You made a bunch of claims about costs per unit and numbers of units sold that I seriously doubt originated from anywhere outside of your butt. And again, even if they are true, it really has nothing to do with whether a $14,000 bicycle is worth $9,000 more than a $5000 bicycle. Just because OP wants to pretend it does is no reason to play along.

If we want to have a real discussion about how we determine value for ourselves, that might make sense and even broaden our perspectives, but setting up yet another snob vs. slob argument is really pointless.
Not everything has to be a debate.

Rolla

A 14K bike may well be "worth it" to someone else for any number of perfectly legitimate reasons, but if a bike is too precious for me to use as intended, it defeats the purpose; I don't ever want a bike I'd be compelled to baby.

I'm perfectly willing to pay $3 - 4K, but that's about it. Others will find that range absurd, as is their prerogative, but I've found it to be kind of a sweet spot for a quality bike that will get ridden a lot.

livedarklions

I'm pretty much the same way except I'm cheaper so my sweet spot is lower. If I have to worry about losing too much value in the bike riding it and locking it up as I want to, it's really making my riding less enjoyable.