So downstairs from my office is a triathlon shop and they have a £9k bike in the window and it just got me thinking 2 things:
1: Who would actually spend £9k on a bike?
and
2: How much is the most the average rider would spend on a bike?

For me the answers are:
£9k on a bike? Hell no!! £9k on a car? Yeah, if I was going to keep it for more than 5 years.
Most I could justify spending on a bike is £2k maybe but in reality the most I can see me spending for a few years is a lot closer to £1k.

What are the thoughts of the STW massive?

Unfortunately or fortunately, for some people 9k is small change.

Anybody who could afford it, which realistically is a lot of people. Adjusting for inflation that’s less than my two most expensive combined and I didn’t have much trouble affording them at the time, despite not being in an exceptionally well paid job (I’m betting there are a lot of people on here earning twice what I was when I got those).

2k would be about my limit I reckon. Unless i win the lottery that is…

aracer – Member
Anybody who could afford it, which realistically is a lot of people.

A lot of people who can afford it wouldn’t. The wealthiest people I ride with certainly don’t ride the poshest bikes in the group (which is a group of aroudn 50-60)

So downstairs from my office is a triathlon shop

1: Who would actually spend £9k on a bike?

Triathletes 😉 and other people* with enough disposable income. It might shock you to know there are more expensive bikes than this available (MTB and road as well) 😆

Just look at what people spend on cars, or watches, or cameras, or jewellery etc.

2: How much is the most the average rider would spend on a bike?

Average rider, or average STW rider?

What are the thoughts of the STW massive?

My thoughts are mostly to not worry about what other people spend on their bikes, whenever I’m looking I look at options around my budget that suit my requirements, I ignore stuff outside my budget as it’s about as relevant to me as £100k cars and £5k watches

* I am not one of these people.

You could buy it for me, I need a pub bike.

My boss just spent £3.5k on a fixed lense camera. I suspect if he was into bikes he’d be the type to buy that. I may have pointed out that’s >2 months wages and become slightly stroppy about doing unpaid overtime for him.

Cycling’s a hobby, a relatively cheap one in the scheme of things. £9k would buy you a new singlehanded racing dinghy (not a great comparison as most sailors buy 2nd/3rd/20th hand).

Even ramblers with enough money could spend £9k single trip (what is the going rate for a trip up Everest?).

On the plus side, it makes my £2k bike seems positively thrifty 😀

I couldn’t ever see myself spending £9k on a bike even if I had it spare.

Recently I managed to justify my new Mtb which was around £2300. That was a stretch to justify in my mind and my wife wasn’t amused.

I often look at really expensive bikes and think they look too bling / trying too hard. On an mtb I get the better suspension / better brakes / better gears thing but I hate bling anodised parts (e.g. Hope brakes and rotors). Happy with 11 speed GX / guide discs etc and they more than cope with my average ability on the bike.

Yes I’d prefer Lyriks to Yaris and could possibly justify upgrading those and maybe GX eagle at some point.

On the road bike front a couple of grand seems to get a pretty amazing bike – I’d like discs for commuting in the rain and I look enviously at a Cannondale / specialised that both get locked next to my racer at work. Fancy discs / carbon aero wheels / di2 but can’t see myself ever needing it.

Yes you can buy a car for £9, but it’s not going to be a top-end, high-performance race machine is it? A compact city runabout with basic spec is more likely, which would roughly equate to a £400-£500 commuter in bike terms

I suppose If you can’t possibly lose anymore weight and you are at the top level of sport, yet remain unsponsored, then yes. Those would be my criteria,
but I will never fullfill any!

Different strokes for different folks, I’m all for people buying top range bikes and components as it funds the development of a lot of the tech that trickles down to the masses, think Eagle NX and Shimano SLX, plus someone gets a great 2nd hand buy further down the road.
I expect bike shops are like car showrooms, the top of the range aspirational show car is center stage but its surrounded buy the cars that everyone actually buys in the end.
Note: I don’t buy 9k bikes but I usually end up spending that once I have gone through all the upgrades!

1: Who would actually spend £9k on a bike?

Entry-level TT bike then? All the cool kids are on the new P5X

£13,500 at Sigma Sport and other reputable outlets.

And following on from aracer, I’m a basic rate tax payer and my collection of bikes is worth more than £9K at rrp.

Yes you can buy a car for £9, but it’s not going to be a top-end, high-performance race machine is it?

you’re right, a car for less than a tenner will be a bit cr@p.

£9k on a bike? Hell no!! £9k on a car? Yeah, if I was going to keep it for more than 5 years.

You’ve kinda answered your own question there. £9k on a car is nothing when a basic Range Rover starts at well over £50k (and the loaded ones go for more like £100k). So if you think about all of those high-end cars on the road, it’s safe to say that a few of them are driven by cyclists who probably have equally exotic kit lurking in the shed.

In short, everyone is different and everyone has different thresholds as to what they consider expensive. I plonked down £200 last week for a pair of used, Fox Factory forks which I reckoned was a good deal. Tell that to a non-cyclist and they’d probably huff and puff about “where’s the rest of the bike?”.

Two basic rules:
1. Don’t worry about what other people ride
2. Don’t worry about what other people think about what you ride

Cycling is a wonderfully inclusive sport where, fundamentally, everyone rides the same thing – a frame with a couple of wheels bolted to it – and if some choose to spend more or less on the bit that joins the wheels together (and, indeed, the wheels themselves!) then it should neither worry you, nor in any way compromise your own enjoyment of the sport.

Ive been reading the Supercar forum on Pistonheads – there they talk about buying Aventador Roadsters as a second / third car. So a 9k bike is like one yearly service for them.

Everyone has a different idea of “worth”

A mate of mine is buying his 6th high end Road bike, cheapest is 6k, most expensive is 10k.
3or4 (one is a disc version) are pretty similar aero Road bikes too.

Unfortunately or fortunately, for some people 9k is small change.

Indeed. I’m working near this bike shop in the City and from their build galleries they don’t seem to put out much below £4-5k, some is well into 5 figures (things like the Parlee Z Zero is a £7k+ frameset).

It’s a hobby, some people have enough disposable income to get a nice bike to do it on. Trickle-down of technologies wouldn’t happen if the bike brands weren’t selling the high-end stuff to someone.

Sure they’ll sell a few £9k bikes, but I think they are mainly there to make your £3-4k bikes look more affordable.

Trickle-down of technologies wouldn’t happen if the bike brands weren’t selling the high-end stuff to someone.

Debatable how much technology there is in some of these frames compared to what the likes of Giant produce

How much is the most the average rider would spend on a bike?

Meaningless question, without more info :D. Everybody* thinks they are average/normal.
‘Average’ by what criteria? Salary, fitness, enthusiasm etc?

* less true at the extremes, admittedly.

Even ramblers with enough money could spend £9k single trip (what is the going rate for a trip up Everest?)

£50K+ from what I have heard/read.

Entry-level TT bike then? All the cool kids are on the new P5X

Jeez, they could’ve at least made an effort to hide the motor and battery, that’s howfin.

The bigger question isn’t “would anyone buy it”, it is “is it worth buying”?

Small incremental gains for a lot of cash is the fundamental of bike buying, particularly roadies.

For MTBs its simply the components – you see this best with Canyon’s range where they’ll start with a bottom of the range and then just spec up the parts, despite the fact that the core frame (& therefore geometry etc) remains identical – e.g. see Neuron 6.0 at £1,029 through to Neuron 9.0 SL at £2,949. You can probably bridge that price gap comfortably by simply pricing up the individual components that make the difference between the two.

I can’t conceive of anyone other than an elite rider who actually needs the performance gains of a £9k road bike vs a £2k road bike. But if you’ve got the dosh, you get to buy exclusivity, hopefully some great customer service & warranty outcomes, and the knowledge that you’ve got top of the range everything on the bike.

Sure they’ll sell a few £9k bikes, but I think they are mainly there to make your £3-4k bikes look more affordable.

This is actually a real marketing thing.

It’s the reason why websites order items by the rather opaque term “relevance” despite the first thing anyone does is price low>high. The first item you see set’s your expectation of price. So on CRC you see a Michelin innertube for £5.99, then sort low>high and buy the £1.99 house brand one which looks like good value, but you don’t bother going to Decathlon and getting one even cheaper because you already think you’ve got a good deal and anything cheaper is just incremental.

With that shop it’s “see £9k bike, buy £2k bike, don’t go to Canyon and get £1500 bike” because it’s only ~5% cheaper. Whereas if they had a £2.5k bike in the window, and you then looked at a £2k bike then the canyon is 20% cheaper.

km79 – Member

Sure they’ll sell a few £9k bikes, but I think they are mainly there to make your £3-4k bikes look more affordable. easier to justify to your partner

😆

No, I don’t think all the bikes I have ever owned add up to 9K but this is good news for all of us.

Next time you want a new bike, walk past the shop with your Mrs (holding hands, having told her how lovely she looks etc) and look in the window before telling her how you would love a new bike but it just wouldn’t feel right spending that kind of money on a bike when you would rather spend it on her and the kids.

A few weeks later, leave a similar web page open on the ipad so she sees it again.

A week or 2 later, come in really late from a night ride telling her how your current bike has had it, it is getting dangerous and is beyond economical repair.

A few days later, tell her you have managed to find a bike for just £2,5k, she will think it is a bargain and you get a new bike and some major brownie points 😆

Loads of pretty run of the mill bikes up around the £3-4k mark now.
And a quick trip to local trail centre or a road sportive will tell you people can’t get enough of them.

Would have thought anyone on £50k+ salary could justify a £9k bike if riding is a large part of their life. And if it makes them feel good, then why not (although i do always have to laugh at people rolling round sportives at 12mph on their deep section carbon wheels).

Yeah people buy them, two of my mates have bikes that would have come with a price tag like that.

Are they worth it? Doubt it, well I’m sure if you added up the costs of all the bits they are “worth it” but, other than that – are they better than the same bike a rung or two lower down the spec list? I doubt it – some people just like bling to try to impress others, some people just like ‘nice things’, some people become so obsessed by their hobby they’ll spend as much as they can to try to get more enjoyment out of it – none of these things are rational things to do, but very few bikes are very rational – I’m sure most of us could ride the stuff we enjoy riding on a £500 HT, you’d still be out there in nature, you’d still be getting away from it, you’d still be trying to squeeze that half-second out of Strava or whatever buzz you need from it, mostly it comes down to competing with each other, either in the bling stakes or the speed stakes you can buy bling and you can buy speed.

Everyone is different. I smile because my FS bike doesn’t look particularly posh unless you actually take a close look at it (or know what you’re talking about). On several occasions people have been fawning over friends’ bikes but have completely ignored mine because it looks a bit too cheap. And you know what – I love this and wouldn’t have it any other way 🙂

Not everyone wants to be a show off and not everyone has a posh bike just for bragging rights. Some just have a nice bike because they want a nice bike.

Would have thought anyone on £50k+ salary could justify a £9k bike if riding is a large part of their life.

Justification has nothing to do with salary. If you live your life to race TTs then getting a loan and buying a decent bike is justifiable/understandable. Better than spending it on a car…

Someone will buy them, there are people to whom £9k is a drop in the ocean. I’ve a friend who takes home £10k a month, and apparently may spend anything up to £25k a year on clothes. So, if they got into triathlons in a big way I can imagine dropping £5k – £10k on a bike to go fasterer wouldn’t be an issue.

Jeez, they could’ve at least made an effort to hide the motor and battery, that’s howfin.

not being bound by UCI rules means triathlon bikes have plenty of room for spare batteries

cycling; it’s the new golf, innit

There is that curve watsit that around the £500-1500 you don’t get much value for spending more then from like £2500-3500 you get proper upgrades (+500 gets you from a Yari to Pike or lighter wheels). That’s the price bracket where you get good borderline pro bikes then beyond 5K its just useless upgrades.

Always wondered if you would be faster spending an extra 1k on a solid 2.5k bike or getting 1k worth of of Training/Gym.

Edit: It’s an S curve/ I think it’s diminishing returns.

I’d rather spend £9k on a bike than on a car. Unfortunately the wife disagrees, and hence we have a car worth more than any of my bikes – probably more than all of them put together 🙁

I’d rather spend £9k on a bike than on a car. Unfortunately the wife disagrees, and hence we have a car worth more than any of my bikes – probably more than all of them put together

See you did things in the wrong order.
Indulge bike fantasy first before acquiring a wife 😆

To answer the original question:

1. If I had the money I might spend £9k on a bike. But if I had that money to spend on my hobby I’d more likely buy 2 bikes and a holiday to go and ride them on. Difference between £4.5k bike and £9k bike = minimal gain for me, particularly as I race infrequently.

2. My current bike I reckon I’ve spent something like £3.5k on. Original bike was probably a touch under £3k, but spent money buying a better shock and getting that and the fork custom tuned.

As with most expensive things I find it best to be ignorant of their cost, that way I never realise how stupid the people are that buy them.

It’s all relative innit? I work with quite a few folk that chuck 3-400 a month at a PCP car, another 7-800 in rent, and maybe 400 on nights out…

Also have folk in my family who have no kids, yet live in a 4 bed detached house, then extend it, and put a log cabin in the garden, and have 3 cars between 2 of them….

I’d never criticise anyone for spending big cash on their hobby, it’s about want, not need.