Forum menu
What I think is important then, from a culture and magazine editorial point of view, is to keep featuring the £500 hardtails (and £1000 full-sussers) and not just as a “here’s a beginners bike”, but also point out that if you’re not taking up racing or planning on keeping up with your fast mates on their £6k enduro sleds down a black run at a trail centre, that a sub-£500 bike could be your only bike that will last you for many years and take you on some epic mountain bike rides, and will still be tough enough for most trails in the UK, even if it’s not the fastest bike on the rougher stuff.
I don't entirely agree with that.
Sometimes poor component's noticeably hold a bike back, but I don't think there's a significant time difference between a functional bike and a super bike.
Remember back in the day when Dirt used to publish a sort of top gear lap times board of the bikes they tested, there was one issue when they were testing all mountain (now enduro I guess) bikes. They loved the Specialized enduro, and credited it with being within seconds of an M3 down the track. They slated the Giant Faith (which to be fair had a really poor spec, it read like a who's who of stuff that disappeared from the market because it was crap), yet it was only a second slower.
The narrative that you need a £6k bike to keep up with someone else on a £6k bike is what's wrong. Your mate on a £6k bike might be fast, but he's not fast because of the bike. It's all a bit..........
Your mate on a £6k bike might be fast, but he’s not fast because of the bike.
Although if you’re on RS XC30 forks and he’s on Pikes you are more likely to wrap yourself around a tree. Some things are more expensive for a reason. 😁
The narrative that you need a £6k bike to keep up with someone else on a £6k bike is what’s wrong. Your mate on a £6k bike might be fast, but he’s not fast because of the bike.
I don't think I got my point across very well there then.
The narrative that you need a £6k bike to keep up with someone else on a £6k bike is what’s wrong.
I've seen plenty of reviews in mags about £6k bikes, and I've seen any number of Superbike drool/fluff articles, and even in this months mbr there a review of a fork that's glowing, but does go onto to say that a downside is it's price. But I don't think I've ever read anything that says "you have to have a £6K bike, otherwise you can't be in our gang"
I don't disagree that mountain biking can be expensive if you want. This month's MBUK has a bike test of Budget DH bikes. It's opening preamble goes "With race bikes used by the big factory teams often costing upwards of £10k, can you really get a decent DH sled for a third of the price"
I guess it all depends on where your "expensive but worth it" intersects with "You could buy a car for that"
I guess it all depends on where your “expensive but worth it” intersects with “You could buy a car for that”
And that could be the problem. People look down on bikes so therefore bikes must be cheap. Just because I can buy a 13 yr old Mondeo with blue smoke trailing from the exhaust for less than any of my bikes, it doesn’t mean that the bikes aren’t worth the money.
Anybody know how much they cost to build?What is the margin on these bikes?