We do a range of bespoke earth-tone colorways

dear ‘the bike industry’

thanks for making awesome bikes for us to cock around on.

and thanks for selling bikes like this:

for £1200.

i love you.

I remember in about 1997 the exotic high-end bikes being £4k. Plugged that into an inflation calculator and that came back with £6168.40 – so not far off. I’d bet the high-end of now is many orders of magnitude better than back in the 90s too

Maybe the ultra exotica! In 2000 an S-Works FSR was £2400, admittedly it was mainly XT, and not absolute top draw spec, but they have gone up significantly beyond inflation IMO.

That said it doesn’t really bother me, if you don’t want to buy one… Don’t.

As long as it’s £7k bloke’s bike allowing £1k bloke to be able to afford his, I guess that’s fine. Just got this nagging feeling that £7k bloke just may be helping a 700 quid bike cost a grand.
That said, it would be nice to have £7k sloshing around waiting for me to spend it !

And if anyone from the bike industry is reading this, please could you persuade anyone who persists with using the term “colorway”(sic) to please shoot themselves.

sadly american

even sadder someone might actually get shot but not the marketing guff guru

Maybe it is because I ride SS but I can’t fathom these prices, I have built a Niner Air 9 Carbon for about £4-4.5k which is insane as it is but I realy can’t think what the hell I could spend to go higher without going proper mad on £500 stems etc which these prebuilt 7k+ don’t have either.

What I was irritated about is the crap level groupset lower midrange bikes have, I think spending £500-700 on a bike like my mate did and getting base deore / alivio kit with a token “better” rear mech is taking the piddle, I know this is “as good as” mid range of 5 years ago etc but I can’t help feeling people spending £1k or less are getting jipped.

Apart from cycle to work schemes which are perpetuating poor value for money under 1k as you have to buy rrp not sale prices on most of them any sane person would be last years model for half the price.

£500-700 on a bike like my mate did and getting base deore / alivio kit with a token “better” rear mech is taking the piddle, I know this is “as good as” mid range of 5 years ago etc but I can’t help feeling people spending £1k or less are getting jipped.

That’s the price of a “base spec” deore/alivio equipped bike which ~20 years ago would have been STX/ alivio mix and cost about £350-450 so inflation is about right and to be fair deore isn’t bad kit, it does its job and lasts. You want SLX/XT pony up son thats £1k plus and you’ll still have the same gears basically.

cookeaa – Member

to be fair deore isn’t bad kit

Today’s Deore is brilliant kit, miles ahead of pretty much anything from five years ago, brakes especially.

I think the problem with the sub £1000 bike is that we are trying to squeeze a lot in. Namely fork and disc brakes. Back in the day neither of these high cost options were on the radar

Today’s Deore is brilliant kit, miles ahead of pretty much anything from five years ago, brakes especially.

15 years ago yes, 10 maybe, 5 years ago… Pull the other one, its barely any different!

I think Deore brakes have had 2 big upgrades in the last 5 years

595 turned something round. It certainly looks way different to what came before

the 596 added servo wave

They sell them because people buy them. I really can’t blame them for that

Really? I’ve always assumed that the reason that you have £7k bikes is to make people think that spending £3.5k on a bike is somehow reasonable…

I don’t blame the manufacturers and retailers for pitching ever more expensive bikes at us, but I was both disappointed and amused to learn from a recent STW that I haven’t yet bought my “first proper mountain bike” as I haven’t yet spent over £2k on a bike 🙄

but I was both disappointed and amused to learn from a recent STW that I haven’t yet bought my “first proper mountain bike” as I haven’t yet spent over £2k on a bike.

I’m not even half way there

I do like the 5k bikes on evans with x9 – 5k won’t buy you top of the range components on a standard production frame.

I am another who has never bought a proper mountain bike – mine have all been sub-1k end-of-line specials

[quoteWhen did it become justifiable to consider that charging SEVEN THOUSAND POUNDS was ok[/quote]

Why does anyone have to justify it?]

I paid £120 for my frame older frame, £70 for the current one, and £100 for the forks.

It’s still 100x better (to me) than a top of the range £7k bike.

It does what I want it to do, and if I snap it in two (unlikely being a steel HT), I’ll buy another cheap one.

Why do you t think organisations do not need to justify their behaviour?

I think anyone who buys a 7K bike will negotiate a fairly hefty discount, or have that much spare cash that it’s not ‘that’ much to drop on a nice bike.

To be fair, £7k is about halfway up the ladder… (OP, I hope you are sat down when you see this)

http://www.thebikerooms.com/bikes/pinarello-graal-2012-dura-ace-di2-sky.html

but I was both disappointed and amused to learn from a recent STW that I haven’t yet bought my “first proper mountain bike” as I haven’t yet spent over £2k on a bike

That one, single statement has put me right off the mag at the mo.