I have never seen a Performance bike store. People here say that they have storefronts and I have no reason to doubt their veracity; however, for me, Performance is just another online vendor.

Motobecane Fantom Cross CX or Super Strada?
 

I am also considering a couple of Motobecane bikes. I am looking for a relaxed road geometry primarily for use commuting. However, about two years ago I was into making a metric century every weekend with a club I was a member of in P.R. China and I was thinking of getting back into that.

I described what I am looking for in this thread. Here is an edited (for brevity)version; however, I did not mention metric century and standard century's in the original post: I am looking at making a purchase in about a month. When I wrote to BD they recommended the Fantom Cross CX. I like the look and the people who have that model here in BF seem to like them. However, I wonder how I will like it on centuries. I expect that if I got this model I would load it up with a rack and baskets like the Le Tour and use it the same way I use the Le Tour.

I am also considering a totally different bike, the Motobecane Super Strada. If I got this bike I would keep the Le Tour as it is (Ok, I would replace the Belgian steel rims, no brakes in the wet annoys me. New rims is where this new bike mindset came from.) and use the new bike as a fun bike on the weekends.

I have seen very little on the Super Strada but it looks interesting, I am leaning strongly in that direction. Can anyone comment on either of these two bikes, the Fantom Cross CX or the Super Strada? Or, can anyone name any other bikes I should be considering?

Companies like BD don't design frames, they just rebrand frames made in Taiwan/China. There's nothing wrong with that of course but when you're buying a brand name bicycle the frame you're getting has been designed and tested by the company's design team and if outsourced for manufacturing, it is built to their specifications. I haven't heard much in the way of BD or any other rebranded frames being of absolutely poor quality so it'a a viable option to get people riding.

I bought a frame only from someone who stripped the groups off of it. It's a motobecane grand Sprint aluminum frame with carbon stays and fork. It included the headset and stem. I won auction with a bid of 122.50 plus 30 for shipping. I built it up with microshift 9speed brifters that I paid 120 bucks for, a used ultegra long cage rd $45 new sora fd $15. I put truvativ elite triple crank that is lighter than a carbon crank and plenty stiff.for me that I got brand new for 35 bucks shipped! And a $15 isis bottom bracket. I also got a.set of tektro brakes from the same eBay store for $22. Add some $ 20 handlebars, $20 chain and $40 cassette on some $100 entry level wheels and I have a sub $600 bike that weighs 21.2 lbs. I'm very happy with the feel of the frame and the ride quality. The microshift shifters shift great and I love how I can downshifting 3 gears with one through. I live on the upper east side of Manhattan and have a couple of great bike shops but I don't have the income to spend thousands on a bike but the guys there love.me because they see how passionate I've become about.learning stuff from them. If you are wealthy, not mechanically inclined, and have limited time on your hands bikes direct is not for you. But for those of us with limited funds, ample time and mechanical skills bikes direct is a.tremendous value. I think they have done a good job of niche marketing.

Maybe a lot of the name brands just farm out all their design work to their suppliers or 3rd part engineering firms because they can't afford/don't want to carry the overhead. The name brands are mostly marketing firms like Nike and don't do any of their own product engineering.

So prove to us that a Motobecane Immortal Team is not equivalent to say, the Specialized Tarmac Elite, or Fuji SST 3.0, etc.

You can't can you?

Nobody in here is saying it is either because nobody really knows.

What we do know, simply by doing a bit of research is that 1) Motobecane frames are made in the same factory (Kinesis) as Specialized, Felt, Scwhinn, and others 2) All road test reviews point out that the Immortal frames are of very high quality, are very lightweight (16 lbs complete bike), and very efficient, and 3) most self confessed Motobecane owners are very happy with their bikes and with BD.

I personally believe (although I can't prove it) that Trek, Specialized, Scott, et all, who have raced their bikes continuously in the world stage have some knowledge that other makers do not and this knowledge comes through in their top of the line bike frames. I also believe (which I can't prove either) is that a factory like Kinesis with design engineers learns a lot from the specs given to them by the big name makers and they take this knowledge and applies it to many of the other "non-big-brand" name frames they design for others.

The bottom line is everyone wins. Those of us who want the brand name and service of LBS and are willing to pay the premium for it, can do so. Others who don't care about brands and want maximum value for their $$ have BD and other internet "shops" to get their bikes from. In the end, everyone gets what they want, which is a great bicycle at a price everyone is happy with.

The only sad thing in here are the bike snobs who have no experience with Motobecane or BD and keep slamming it because it's not a Trek, or a Specialized, or a Felt, etc. That is total bike snobbery, which I just can't stand.

Actually, the big name brands do have design engineers in their home countries. They also have in-house frame builders who together design and build prototype frames for testing in the US (or wherever they are located). Once tested and proven, this frame is then sent to the Asian factories to be built using those specs.

Not all of them do this, but the big names like Trek, Specialized, Jamis, et, all do this. I don't who who else but this is usually how it's done. This method is used by many other companies in the US that design all kinds of things from laptop computers, to cameras, to memory modules, etc, to cars, to airplanes, etc.

Having said that, there also many companies out there who are just brand names but have no true engineering/design team and rely on the source factories to do this for them. I know that Fuji bikes is at least one of them not too long ago. ASI (owner of Fuji) at one point considered re-badging the Kestrel bicycles into Fuji bicycles when ASI acquired Kestrel in 2007. Kestrel was one of those small American companies that designed AND built their frames here in the USA. Now they are built in Taiwan alongside Fuji. It wouldn't surprise me if Fuji's SST line has many design elements of the original Kestrel frames.

Which helps explain why BD carries so many Kestrel bikes. We already have determined that many of BD's bikes are based on Fuji bikes. Further, some are even identically equipped; quite simply, many are Fuji bikes with a different name on the tube.

Do you happen to know what other names ASI owns? It might help in tracking down the other BD models and finding their name equivalents.

Don't bother looking, I found it myself

So far we have a few BD bikes identified:
The Winsdor Tourist is an identical match for the Fuji Tour.

The Dawes Lightning line uses the same frame as the Fuji Newest line but there is a difference in components.


Do we have any others yet?
I am still looking for the Sprint line, which includes: The Super Strada, Sprint, Grand Sprint, Vent Noir, and Grand Record. If anyone can help with this one I would appreciate it as I am still trying to decide on a Super Strada or a Fantom Cross cx.

Yes we can, and Fuji knows it too :)
So one can only make the comparison against an equivalent Fuji. But avoid comparison against a 'comparably equipped' real brand like Cervelo or Pinarello, whatever 'comparably equipped' on the BD site means, since we all know the Ultegra group consists of more than shifters+cassette. Now someone might just prefer to shell out a 100 bucks more for the Fuji label, since they look quite cool, have real history and they don't also sell a product called a 'mango'.

I think you're not reading the criticism of BD correctly.

Everyone here understands what they are doing. I think most of the BD critics are just offended by their marketing hype, which is misleading. They compare their bikes against branded product, partly by inflating their MSRP's. A more accurate comparison would be comparing their bikes against other private label/no name brands. As long as you understand what you are getting -- a no-name bike from Asia, w/assembly required, and no local support -- there is nothing wrong with their bikes. Plenty of folks have said that in this thread, and others.

You come off as naive and shrill, which is as bad as being a snob. Having made your point repeatedly -- both in this thread and elsewhere -- I'm not sure what else you have to prove. Go order a bike from BD; they're good values; I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

Fuji Cross uses a diamond shaped down tube. The Fantom does not. Not the same frame.

Thanks, I took it off the list. I was going by the geometry charts. Is it, possibly, based on an older model?