Hahaha. You know I meant if they couldn’t afford to ride the latest-greatest. You have me on a tangent now though.
.
I usually avoid relative price conversations for a few reasons.
1. I’m an ‘amortize your life’ kinda guy. How much longer do you need to own super bike 1 vs. super bike 2 to make up $1000 difference on a $15,000 bike really?
2. Buying the right thing once is always cheaper than buying the wrong thing first and then buying the right thing. I won’t name bikes here, but I’ve known a few people who took a bath on a ‘best complete value’ bike after a year of disliking it. This is also why I think custom builds can be the better value for a rider with the treasure who knows what they want.
3. I prefer much more in-depth value conversations than just comparing the price of two similar spec. bikes.
4. SRP pricing is an aspirational imaginary number often unwedded to dealer margins or realities (like how much work does it take to properly build the bike out of the box). Covid was a weird time but, particularly for high-end bikes, I’m excited to start hearing about street price again. Some bikes look like better values because of razor thin margins (for dealers, I’m sure those manufacturers do fine).
Anyway, sorry for the long preamble.
This summer I had a conversation with another rider where he first lamented the standard trope of how “over-priced” Santa Cruz bikes are now - after having owned a couple - such that he bought something different than the SCB rig he was looking at.
The he started whinging that he wished his new rig used nice pivot hardware like SCB instead of cheap sh*t, that his bearings didn’t last a season, and that it took over a month for a minor warranty claim.
In the moment I settled on platitudes but as soon as I arrived home I had to look both rigs up. About a grand at 10K CAD. So 10% savings.
Jan. 18, 2023, 5:02 p.m. - Andrew Major
Hahaha. You know I meant if they couldn’t afford to ride the latest-greatest. You have me on a tangent now though. . I usually avoid relative price conversations for a few reasons. 1. I’m an ‘amortize your life’ kinda guy. How much longer do you need to own super bike 1 vs. super bike 2 to make up $1000 difference on a $15,000 bike really? 2. Buying the right thing once is always cheaper than buying the wrong thing first and then buying the right thing. I won’t name bikes here, but I’ve known a few people who took a bath on a ‘best complete value’ bike after a year of disliking it. This is also why I think custom builds can be the better value for a rider with the treasure who knows what they want. 3. I prefer much more in-depth value conversations than just comparing the price of two similar spec. bikes. 4. SRP pricing is an aspirational imaginary number often unwedded to dealer margins or realities (like how much work does it take to properly build the bike out of the box). Covid was a weird time but, particularly for high-end bikes, I’m excited to start hearing about street price again. Some bikes look like better values because of razor thin margins (for dealers, I’m sure those manufacturers do fine). Anyway, sorry for the long preamble. This summer I had a conversation with another rider where he first lamented the standard trope of how “over-priced” Santa Cruz bikes are now - after having owned a couple - such that he bought something different than the SCB rig he was looking at. The he started whinging that he wished his new rig used nice pivot hardware like SCB instead of cheap sh*t, that his bearings didn’t last a season, and that it took over a month for a minor warranty claim. In the moment I settled on platitudes but as soon as I arrived home I had to look both rigs up. About a grand at 10K CAD. So 10% savings.