It seems like that quality improvement correlated rather suspiciously with increased automation in manufacturing and increased overseas competition. Am I off base about that?
http://www.thecyclingexperts.co.uk/get-cycling/buying-a-bike...
There are really two kinds of cyclists; enthusiasts who ride regularly and dilettantes who ride two or three times a year. The latter choose a bicycle almost entirely on price, because they don't know any other criteria on which to judge bicycles. These customers don't care that the bike will start disintegrating after a couple of hundred miles, because they'll never use it that much.
The bike boom of the 1970s meant that lousy bicycles almost completely dominated the market, but the more recent bike boom has created a generation of much more savvy customers. The market has split into lousy department-store bikes and real bikes sold through specialist retailers.
An $80 bike can be a completely reasonable choice for someone who is not a racer, not a courier, and just needs to get from point A to point B every day.
Cost is an important part of the equation, but it's not the only part. Naive bike buyers gravitate towards features that make a bicycle worse for everyday use. Knobbly tires provide more grip in mud, but less grip and higher rolling resistance on tarmac. Suspension is worse than useless if you're not barreling across a bumpy trail, which is why quality suspension systems have a lock-out to temporarily disable it.
If you ask a serious cyclist to name the best all-round utility bike, most of them will name a classic tourer like the Dawes Galaxy. Here's what that looks like:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawes_Galaxy#/media/File:1995_...
You'll find many similar bikes being sold for pocket change on Craigslist, because they don't look the part. Novices literally don't know what a decent bicycle looks like and the big box retailers are happy to pander to their misconceptions.
The most irritating part is the lack of standardization. Every bike needs its own cassette remover and its own bottom bracket and its own brake pads. I’ve had 3 different road bike wheel diameters, 5 different crank standards, and 10 different axle standards.
And then the big brands like Shimano are all too happy to have their name and parts associated with everything from crappy BSOs to luxury bicycles. Rarely do these details appear in the Craigslist ad, nor the bike store ad, even if I had the inclination to memorize the Shimano part list. Many ads don’t even list the length of the bicycle.
I’m not sure about the “plenty of life” thing, either. Usually, I ride a bike for a couple years, and then some part of the frame cracks. Disappointingly, this almost never happens to the cheap department store “mountain” bikes. Usually, for those, the bottom bracket breaks.
>I’m not sure about the “plenty of life” thing, either.
As long as it isn't left out to rust, a lugged steel frame will outlive its owner. Aluminium frames might be corrosion resistant, but they'll inevitably fail due to fatigue cracking. A properly maintained set of quality wheels will last ~30,000 miles before the rims wear out. Quality tyres and chains are usually good for at least 3,000 miles, cassettes are good for 10-12,000 miles if the chain is replaced before it stretches.
I'm a long time recumbent rider, and people accustomed to BSOs tend to blanch at the price of a recumbent, even when it isn't out of line with what a good bike generally costs, and even when they'd happily spend that much or more on a bag of golf clubs.
The local bike dealer starts road bikes at around $999 and goes up to maybe $10,000, with most sales in the $1,400 to $3,000 range.
Really no comparison in the products. I pedal hard enough I suspect I could break the crank off a BSO in a week. Keep meaning to buy one and write a blog about it or something..
Street biking is a little less aggressive compared to double black diamond mountain biking though so I should last a bit longer.
This bike was only a year old at that point; clearly it wasn't designed to be ridden beyond an initial burst of post-purchase enthusiasm. It's the only time I've ever seen the failure of a bike frame.
Though it generally took a few months at least.
Second: the quality bikes that were appearing during at least subsequent bike booms were often very heavy on hand-fabrication. Ritchy, Fischer, and other Marin Country mountain bike manufacturers were hand-building frames in small lots, and often used components from manufacturers with a heavy hand-made element to their manufacture (though not exclusively). The improvements came for giving a shit, riding what you built, and rapid innovation cycles (something heavily automated manufacture didn't offer). The punishing environment of trail-riding also meant that bikes built virtually entirely for styling and aesthetic appeal (the Sting Ray, beach cruisers, etc.) simply didn't stand up to use. Put in evolutionary terms, the selection process was quite exacting.
As mountain biking evolved to more general street use, mountain bikes also became highly subject to the same dynamic which had affected earlier classes of bikes.