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Whilst drinking my morning brew out of my retro Peugeot mug, I wondered to myself what bikes they're doing these days, given their esteemed heritage as the most successful cycling trade team of all time, with the likes of the great Tom Simpson having graced their saddles, never mind the fact that my first proper racer was a Peugeot Premier back in the 80s.
So I had a look. Dear god, what have they done...
Muddy Fox used to be kinda OK... now it's all shite at the back of sports direct...
DrP
Peugeot is a sad one, they were part of CycleEurope I think but Stellantis had claimed the brand back a while ago, with great plans for relaunch. Which don't seem really to have come off.
It might just be me imagining it but I had the sense a couple of years ago that Raleigh were trying to get back into the "serious cyclist" kind of market but then I have not really heard or seen much of them since.
Tbf I don't know if they were ever considered a serious/professional brand but they seemed like it to me as a kid in the 80's!
A few years ago I'd have said Saracen. Much time spent lusting after a Kiliflyer and trying to save for the more realistic Tufftrax as an 80's teen. Then they went bad - really bad. But now their stuff seems relevant again. Not earth shatteringly innovative but in a crowded market of mostly good bikes it seems ok looking on first impressions.
Plus one for Muddy Fox. I remember going into the shop they had in London and looking at the top of the range one, somewhere between £800 and £1000 I seem to recall. I ended up buying a Rockhopper as they were half the price.
The courier was arguably one of the most important mountain bikes made in its time and now they are are just another bit of sports direct
Funnily enough I still have an original Muddy Fox handlebar pouch which it turns out was made for them by Karrimor when they were a quality brand so I must get bonus points for owning one product made by 2 companies that started at the top and worked their way to the bottom
Tbf I don’t know if they were ever considered a serious/professional brand but they seemed like it to me as a kid in the 80’s!
Yes, they had their Special Bicycle Development Unit (SBDU) that knocked out the good stuff - your bike came with a label signed by the builder.
Last I heard, Iron Horse was a supermarket BSO brand, but they might have given up now?
Raleigh were already a mixed bag when I was a kid. Reynolds 753 Team Banana on one hand, Burners were utter rubblish compared to the stuff coming out of the US at the time.
Jamis were a pretty big deal back in the 90s. They disappeared for a while... now are back with some ok looking bikes.
But who buys a £2K MTB from Millets?! 🙂
https://www.millets.co.uk/16185403/jamis-faultline-a1-full-suspension-trail-bike-16185403
Kona
True.
I can remember looking at MBUK mags as a kid in the early 90s, thinking Muddy Fox were the coolest thing ever. Never owned one because that kind of spec just wasn't attainable for kids of working class families back then.
Marin is a bit harsh, they seem to make decent semi-budget bikes that are reasonably well-designed and specced, don't they?
In some ways that's better than being another over-priced "premium" brand.
Another that might not be totally fair, but Lapierre were one of the top brands about 10 or 12 years ago - the Zesty was such a great bike (and the Spicy and Froggy) - but they quickly dropped out of relevance in the mid-tensies. Hardly see any now, despite their successful race programme.
Edit: Kona is a very good shout. Their FS bikes look woeful these days.
GT. They've gone from cutting edge suspension and materials so the budget range of PON.
Muddy Fox have been terrible by contemporary standards since about '94 and the elastomer full susser. The original owners had been robbed of the brand long before that. Its been passed between a few BSO makers before Sports Direct took over. Having said that I've just bought a MF Tempo 200 hybrid for commuting. For £200 it's a genuinely good bike.
Have Peugeot ever been any good for their actual range as opposed to rebadged custom built stuff for their race teams? Weren't Gould's Peugeot just Roberts?
Raleigh seem to be putting out some decent commuter/real world bikes now. Aside from a few MTBs that weren't American I've always seen the brand as mostly novelty toy nonsense like Vektars and Choppers, etc.
...( Raleigh)... Tbf I don’t know if they were ever considered a serious/professional brand but they seemed like it to me as a kid in the 80’s!
They definitely were a top make, but back in the day produced a full range from gas-pipe BSO's to the professional team beauty below. A resto-mode one of these would be lush, the replica ones are even quite nice.
I've still got my 1994 Muddy Fox Adventurer and my 2008ish Iron Horse 6.4 and struggle to part with both. The Muddy Fox took a lot of saving paper round money and a lot of lusting after, hate walking through the "biking" section of Sports Direct now.
Guess the brands I currently ride are doomed!
Bit of a joyless thread this!
GT have benn downhill (arf!) since they came up with the wonderful i-Drive...
GT,
bikes like the RTS, LTS were absolutely cutting edge in their time and days was when the Zaskar was the ultimate in affordable hardtail bling, There's a Zaskar in the range but it's an off-the-shelf run of the mill hard tail with SRAM NX and RS Gold suspension and it looks like every other bargain bike you could buy at Halfords.
Cannondale.
Bikes like the Badboy and Killer and Super Vee and their lightweight hardtails were everywhere, and at the top of every "superbike" test in magazines again they're now dull mainstream bikes with just a weird (and expensive) fork.
Cove Bikes. They did some ace hardtails (Stiffee, handjob) but now just a shop selling GT bikes with nothing new for years.
https://covebike.com/password
Schwinn use to make some beautiful bikes if you go back far enough but I think got caught up in various sales and now focus on low end.
Pace seem to have been in the wilderness for a while and definitely not the brand they were, which is a big shame.
Have Peugeot ever been any good for their actual range as opposed to rebadged custom built stuff for their race teams? Weren’t Gould’s Peugeot just Roberts?
Yeah, they were just the exotic-for-being-Euro version of Raleigh, surely? I had a friend who got hold of one of their expensive road bikes years ago and found that it had been welded so that the frame wasn't straight. It was great cornering in one direction, not so in the other. 😀
Mavic.
Used to be (pretty) much the go to choice for rims. Can’t remember the last time I heard of them.
As a previous owner of one I would offer Intense as being a shadow of their former selves. Pre carbon frames they were up there as one of the best but seem to have lost their way since imho
I did see a video recently that was discussing shimano. The debate wasn't "are they behind the competition" but "just how many years behind the competition are they?"
Given that they just to always lead the way, could they qualify for this thread? Maybe not a shadow of former selves, but certainly slipping.
Marin is a funny one...
They were one of the most well thought of brands in early nineties.
Then they had the "trailquest" years with Whyte designed stuff. Every single one you saw had a map board attached to the bars (apart from mine).
But thy have definetely reinvented themselves again and have a decent range of not overly flash hardworking spec'd bikes with good progressive geo for not insane money.
Fair comment about Intense, they were quite desirable when they were aluminium but now they're just another boring bit of plastic.
Cannondale is unfair though, they make among the best road and gravel bikes and the MTBs I'm aware of (Jekkyl, Habit) look very good. Seemed like they did more "weird for the sake of it" stuff in the past TBH.
Then they had the “trailquest” years with Whyte designed stuff. Every single one you saw had a map board attached to the bars (apart from mine).
Were those Marins the original "dad bike"?
Cannondale, they make good stuff now, but in their heyday they were lust-worthy.
Charge bikes, they made some great steel hardtails and were a great small brand that made good bikes at a reasonable price, but now have been swallowed up and make lame commuter e-bikes in the US.
GT bikes are ok, but not the what they were.
Kona seem to be struggling nowadays (maybe not financially) when it comes to nice bikes.
Sombrio were never the same after they made the fateful error of listening to specialists in brand expansion. They borrowed big, diversified, lost their core customers and failed.
Marin make some pretty good bikes now. They seem to have focused on making a smaller range of better bikes rather than trying to hit every price point.
I was going to say GT. From the mid 90s of ball burnished, Judy SL/DH, XTR & Syncros equipped dream machines to just a bit normal.
I did see a video recently that was discussing shimano. The debate wasn’t “are they behind the competition” but “just how many years behind the competition are they?”
Who's ahead of them then, with what? (Genuine, non-argumentative, Q)
GT/Kona/Saracen all seemed to falter in the late 90s/Early noughties when they started appearing in Halfords.
trailquest years
Forgot about that.
Sidetrack - could trailquest return in the gravel bike era?
I still have a soft spot for GT...
I did see a video recently that was discussing shimano. The debate wasn’t “are they behind the competition” but “just how many years behind the competition are they?”
Given that they just to always lead the way, could they qualify for this thread? Maybe not a shadow of former selves, but certainly slipping.
I'll not get all tribal, but I don't think there's a shred of undisputable evidence for that.
Who’s ahead of them then, with what? (Genuine, non-argumentative, Q)
That's fine, I posted for discussion rather than argument, I'm not even sure I agree. All my drivetrains are based on shimano.
The video was about SRAM Transmission. Their claim was that even before Transmission, Shimano were behind SRAM AXS and anecdotally I've heard more people grumble about Shimano 12 speed than SRAM 12 speed.
Fair comment about Intense, they were quite desirable when they were aluminium but now they’re just another boring bit of plastic.
There was a rumour that there were even a couple of straight ones.
Cove Bikes
Came here to say that (I have one!)
Back in the day if you wanted a hardcore hardtail, you went for a Santa Cruz Chameleon or a Cove Stiffee.
And yeah, then they just stuck in that rut and never innovated and everything moved on.
Definitely Saracen as well, at least for a time. I had a late 90's titanium Kili Ultra which was amazing.
Sadly I was working in a bike shop that sold the later BSO full suspension Saracen bikes... Took them a while to claw their way back out of that hole.