Depends what cars you want to compare it to, if you look at top end MTB bikes as race machines maybe it’s not too bad?
Certainly parts on utilitarian bikes last a long time usually.
precisely – I’ve got an old step through, rod braked bike that had lived in a ditch for 40 odd years. Apart from the tyres, everything – drive train, hubs, bottom bracket headset – everything that moved worked, straight out of the ditch even without lube. If we want to have bikes that last like cars we need to ride bikes that are built like hackney cabs, not bikes that are built like race cars.
We’ve got no tradition of transportational cycling in this country – even people who commute do so on bikes that are designed for other purposes. People buying CX bikes to ride to work on, couriers on track bikes. We’re such a bunch of dicks in the UK (myself very much included) you pretty much can’t even buy a proper bike here and even on a cycling forum there’ll be very few people who actually own one.