Anyone can afford a 5k bike. Its called 0%APR.
What is crackers is someone buying a 5k bike and driving round in a 2k car. I couldnt get my head round that.
Especially as mtb's plummet in value.
Buy any frame- get it resprayed in a colour of your choice and its unique, far better than boutique. Simples 
Especially as mtb's plummet in value.
And cars don't?
A 5k car doesnt plummet in value over a year does it?
Anyone can afford a 5k bike. Its called 0%APR.
What is crackers is someone buying a 5k bike and driving round in a 2k car. I couldnt get my head round that.
Especially as mtb's plummet in value.
Buy any frame- get it resprayed in a colour of your choice and its unique, far better than boutique. Simples
That’s the spirit 0.1% counts as a recovery apparently, lets get up to our eyeballs in 0% magic free Debt again!!
5K bike 2K Car? Sounds like that person has their priorities in order to me…
Compared with Cars, bikes hold there value stunningly well, Especially MTBs, if someone tried to sell you a car telling you they had “used it mostly off road” and “Not had any big crashes” would you buy it?
I like bikes but I came to realise its the person and the person's fitness and attitude that are more important than a bit of bling.
Riding around on 5k (even 2k) doesn't make you a better rider.
Hence rider training is in order for me this year and Im aiming to get out more
hora last year i was driving to rides in a £180 mondeo with a 5k bike in the boot , not so bad this year my cars worth £1500 but i do more miles on the bike than i do in the car so why not 
Why have you changed from your pimp Epic?
I change every season (another case for mainstream there actually, I really struggled to sell my Titus, where as people have bitten my arm off for my Epics for the last 3 years!), and just fancied a change from Spesh. The Fuel seems very nice, even more bling than any of the Epics!
I love orange but would certainly not consider them boutique. Take Ventana offering frames for a price which not far off mass produced stuff. Everything bar the bearings made in-house (including the powdercoating now, so they have control over the quality), offering custom and semi custom geo, customer service where you speak with the main man, trade in programme - the list goes on. There are others in a similar vein too.
I've had warranty issues with big brands in the past. I'd rather them spend less on flashy advertising and more on basic customer service and support and REAL R&D - so they are not sending out poor product which is being tested by us! Grrrr.
@hora -
Agreed.
But given a 7K pot of free money and tasked with purchasing a car and a bike I think I’d weight my spending towards the bike end of things, cant see why people see such importance in a car...
Who wants a pricey car? It only gets keyed it’s not like you can drive the thing at any speed anywhere anyway, if your not stuck behind some blue-rinser then the rozzers have a camera waiting for you…
Nah something to transport bikes and people that is all a car is for these days, so why spend more on it?
so they are not sending out poor product which is being tested by us!
You really think it's the mainstream manufacturers doing that? As a percentage failure rate from what I've seen I would say the boutique brands are far more guilty of that!
cookeaa- my criteria for a car is reliability. If you could find me a reliable car I'd pay ANYTHING! £500 or £5,000!
Sod the keying, speed etc etc.
b r - Member
Bikes are a bit like cars, once you've spent a certain amount there are very, very few really crap ones.As to brands/marketing, people will pay far in excess of a products costs if they believe the hype - you've only got to look at the high 'value' fashion items. Many years ago I did some work at an importer of materials and silks - they were buying scarves in at dozen for a pound - that eventually ended up in Liberty at £50+ each.
As for bikes, for me the cost of the frame is irrelevent - its how it rides thats the key. But its in the components where you can make a real difference, and usually money talks.
Its also very enjoyable in buying a mainstream bike, and then swapping and buying top end stuff over time - whenever deals and/or breakages happen.
That man has underlined this whole thread with one stroke. I've done the same and come round full circle in 20 years of riding. I now have Specialized DH and AM bikes and a Giant road bike. I'll ignore my hardtail.
Is that a Newsboy? You have bought among the most pointless bikes ever, well done
Do people really consider Santa Cruz to be boutique ?
Wow, I've got two of them. 
Do people really consider Santa Cruz to be boutique ?
They do feel very special even though the designs arent anything special. they just get the angles etc etc 'right'.
Do people really consider Santa Cruz to be boutique ?
I'm just as surprised that people don't.
But as I said before, I think it's more a disagreement about what the word means than about what SC (or Orange) actually do.
Personally (and probably like many others on here) my attitude to bike buying is more like "what can I get cheap that's suitable for the sort of riding that I want to do?"
I don't flatter myself that only one bike designer is clever enough to create a bike good enough for my immense talents.
And this all comes back to what is boutique?
Is it only custom built bikes, properly bespoke stuff? In which case there's hardly any out there! Or is it small manufacturers with a small number of employees working on a small scale?
On another note... WGAF!?
I bought the Chameleon because I wanted something with horizontal dropouts to run a Rohloff and it was the first bike to turn up on ebay locally at the right price.
I bought the Blur because, on paper, VPP sounded like the best suspension linkage and it was cheaper than an Intense.
So, all this time I should have been feeling smug and looking down on other people on their common bikes. I never knew. 
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