[Closed] Why Are Mountain Bikes So Expensive?

Uhhh get a cheaper one?

Or get a more expensive car.

APF

An Orange 5 you say. Have you considered comparing it to other brands?

almost £3500 for mountain bike, that's more than my car.

Yes, but it uses more advanced technology and wont cost you the thousands of pounds a year your car costs you.

Spock, i'm pretty sure my bikes cost me more a year than my van if you don't include tax and insurance..

😳

Oranges (particularly the full suspensions) are super expensive and very bad value compared to all its competitors.

This is mainly because the FS ones are welded in Halifax, not Tiawan.
Also I suspect Orange take a pretty big margin on them.

for example, An Orange 5 frame is £1399.
A Santa Cruz Heckler frame Is £899.

Thats £500 cheaper, for a very similer frame which is every bit as good as the Orange.

I hate to say this, as i'm a Halifax lad and would love to support Orange. But they are hidiously priced for what they are. and however much I want one I could never justify the expense. I would pay a bit more in order to buy British, but I wont bend over and get ****ed in the arse for the privalidge.

orange 5 is a british, top of the range mountain bike with sophisticated dampers and brakes etc.
To compare it to a car you need to compare like for like say a british top end sports car, perhaps an Aston Martin DB9 for around £130,000?

You are comparing a new bike to a second hand car which is not really the same.
Perhaps you can purchase a second hand bike which evens things out or get a cheaper bike.
you can buy a brand spanking new citroen car for £6000 in the garage next to my work (its probably crap) - like wise you can purchase a brand new mountain bike £150 in my lbs (its probably crap).

etc. etc.

top of the range mountain bike with sophisticated dampers and brakes etc.

LOL @ klunky WTF etc

you dont think the damper from cane creek etc. or the brakes from hope are sophistacted?

Prices have gone berzerk in the last few years, there's no way I'd spend 2.5k on a frame, not a chance in hell. But lots of people do, and I'm happy to take second hand ones for a third or less of the price.

klunky has a point. You are comparing a top end bike with a bottom end car. £3500 isn't a lot for a bike if your other hobby is collecting sports cars.

Other brands offer much better value IMO. Trek and Specialized for off the peg bikes that work.

you dont think the damper from cane creek etc. or the brakes from hope are sophistacted?

Nope.

 

My rear hub cost more than my car!
Tune Prince/'98 Mondeo TD.

What Clunky said is probably correct, compare a £150 Halfords job to a Daewoo Matiz and my Yeti ASR-C to a £1m Mosler.
You can buy a 'full-susspension bike' for £100 from Argos but it won't be as good as the Orange. Likewise you can buy a Ford Focus for £10k which will look very similar to the Focus WRC Malcolm Wilson will sell you for £3/4m.

Prices have gone berzerk in the last few years, there's no way I'd spend 2.5k on a frame, not a chance in hell. But lots of people do

I would pay a bit more in order to buy British, but I wont bend over and get **** in the arse for the privalidge.

Sounds like your LBS has a pretty exotic pricing policy.

Orange are hardly Aston Martin though. More Land Rover.

The level of technology in, say, and Orange Five, doesn't even come close to the technology found in even a relatively basic car, please don't try and pretend otherwise. Bike companies charge a fortune because people are gullible and want new tech as they think it'll make them ride better and look good in the car park, and people will pay...

WILL EVERYONE STOP COMPARING BIKES TO CARS - GETTING REDICULUS AND POINTLESS!

(breath)

c

I think you can get my point though.

A good mountain bike costs around £600ish. A really good one costs much much more if buying new.
For second hand the same situation - less 60%ish ??

The most basic car in the world has suspension more sophisticated than most mountain bikes..

The reason bikes are so expensive is they are made in a much lower volume than cars are

Demand is high, so are prices. We keep buying stuff no matter how much it goes up.

Because people like me spend £550 on some cranks, to replace their perfectly good cranks.

A good mountain bike costs around £600ish

I do agree, bikes seem to have got mental expensive in the last few years. I haven't really been riding much of late due to a complicated life, starting to try and get back into it properly... need a new ride... and just looking at the prices is scaring me!

I had hoped to pick up a decent full sus machine for £1500 - and was expecting mid range from one of the big manufacturers for that. Preferably a decent spec skills compensator in the 150mm travel region 😉 Seems that most bikes of that ilk START at comfortably north of £2k! Basic Trek Remedy is £2,200 for instance... starting to dispair, especially as my finances are being destroyed by the CSA and another wee un enroute for Spring.

Pah.

I may have to see if I can reviatalise the Marin Rocky Ridge somehow instead. At least for a year or so.

I wish I could be sophisticated...

Prices have gone berzerk in the last few years, there's no way I'd spend 2.5k on a frame, not a chance in hell. But lots of people do, and I'm happy to take second hand ones for a third or less of the price.

and Cooks, grafton , srp, Merlin, etc were all cheap?

No,

there has always been a stupidly expensive high end. Consider SID SLs were £600 i seem to remember in 95/96 how much would that be now corrected for inflation.

And in the last couple of years specifically
[url= http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=gbpusd=X#symbol=;range=my;compare=;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined; ]exchange rates[/url]

I dont think bikes are more expensive now than 10-12 years ago?

Even back then you could spend £5k on a sh bike etc.

To be fair I think you definately get more for your money these days. unless you buy an orange

Suspension on bikes like the orange (fox, RS etc) is much more sophisticated than low end cars, high speed, low speed compression, adjustable travel that doesn't affect spring rate, shim stacks, dual air etc.... And brakes on bikes are more advanced than low end cars too, car brakes are very simple, 1 piston etc .With bikes you get adjustable power(well pad clearance) ,controlled lever stroke (whatever the word is the the cut out that guides the lever on shimano xt levers). Probably not compared to cars designed for performance though

A bike is a collection of parts, Orange (in this case) do not have control over the cost of the majority of these parts.

They are also a small scale producer and consequently do not get a particularly good deal on the cost of either the parts nor the tubes/aluminium they make there frame from.

Which incidentally is why car manufacturers share parts, across not only their own models but with competitors.

And yes, my bike cost more than my car - but the bike (and its parts) were all new (and are all top 'spec'), whereas my car is s/h.

you dont think the damper from cane creek etc. or the brakes from hope are sophistacted?

Nope.

@thebikechain
What about damper from fox, brakes from formula?

 

Theres two reason why a bike would be expensive - one is the law or diminishing returns - the more value you add to a bike, the fewer people will buy one, because not everyone will pay a bit more for something thats a bit better. Adding that value might be adding material things technology, complexity or nice metal or it might be something that gives a warm feeling in your tunny like prettiness, or cleverness or some misplaced satisfaction if having tubes welded together by white people instead of yellow people. By making and selling less your overheads per bike are higher, which means you have to charge more, which means even fewer people will buy one, which means...... Thats why the difference between a £500 bike and a £5000 bike isn't as great as between a £50 bike and a £500 one.

The other might be to control the quantities you sell. If Orange (for instance) priced their bikes to match Specialised they'd sell as many bikes as specialised. They might not want to make and sell that many bikes, deal with that much work, make the investments that that requires, be that kind of business and live that kind of life. They might just want to sell enough bikes to be happy, have happy customers and nothing more.

There might be a third reason - that cycle buyers and weak willed weirdos who'll buy any old crap at any old price and the manufacturers are all laughing at them and rubbing their hands with glee as they shake us til all the housekeeping falls out our pockets. But in reality buyers set and limit the prices things can be sold for to a much greater extent than they realise, especially as not one of use [i]needs[/i] to buy a bike, let alone one that only gets ridden in circles that start and end in carparks.

i payed 3220 for my alpine 160 2011

By way of comparison, back in '89 my rigid M600 Cannondale was about 600 quid..

Bear in mind the exchange rate's not helped over the last few years - I bought a German recumbent (ok, frame's probably made in Asia) about two years ago for about 2k, pretty much the same spec is now about 3k. A pity I didn't buy it with a Rohloff...

[url= http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/3322682/c_1/1%7Ccategory_root%7CSports+and+leisure%7C14419152/c_2/3%7C15701421%7CBikes,+cycling+and+accessories%7C14419153/c_3/4%7Ccat_14419153%7CDual+suspension+bikes%7C14419175.htm ]Mountain bikes expensive?[/url]
I mean that's full sus with discs [b]and[/b] it's a Muddy Fox - why exactly do you need to spend 35 times as much?

Mountain bikes expensive?
I mean that's full sus with discs and it's a Muddy Fox - why exactly do you need to spend 35 times as much?

Motor vehicle companies run a different pricing structure because they make most of their profit over the life of the car in the sale of parts, especially highly profitable crash damage repair parts. In general bike manufacturers can only make their profit at the initial sale point of the bicycle. Therefore the pricing and business structure is much different.

Bike companies charge a fortune

that's right, there's no competition at all 🙄

anyway I bet this is just a genius troll 😀

Orange are hardly Aston Martin though. More Land Rover.

you dont think the damper from cane creek etc. or the brakes from hope are sophistacted?

[b]Nope.[/b]

A bike is a collection of parts, Orange (in this case) do not have control over the cost of the majority of these parts

I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment in the OP particularly as many of the components in the Hope brakes and Cane Creek shock are, beneath all the bluster and sheen, toy (rubber) parts which are prone to breaking down in, for example, cold weather conditions (cf a number of recent posts on here) - surprising given they're made in Yorkshire. Hope/Cane Creek/Fox bleat about this but the fact is you never hear about MX/car shocks blowing. It's like how each B-2 costs a billion bucks (due to politics more than the inherent cost), and the tech doesn't work in the rain. Stupid.

Why Are Mountain Bikes So Expensive?

I would imagine that the manufacturers have done a break even analysis and a bit of market research and decided that enough people have enough money to buy enough units to give them a profit. Unfortunately you appear not to be one of them. 😉

Even the cheapest cars are assembled from thousands of precisely made components, but bikes from barely a hundred.

Not an easy comparison.

Even the cheapest cars are assembled from thousands of precisely made components, but bikes from barely a hundred.

Precisely made? Have you [i]been[/i] in a French car?

And in what VOLUME are cars made, and how many models share the same parts? Think about it.....

motorbikes would be a better comparison

I was at Bionicon last week. Their bikes are assembled from 350+ parts.