I bought a Felt road bike last year. I am totally happy with it and the bang for the buck, but I cannot help myself look at other bikes (I’m sure this is common) and review sites. Why don’t Felt road bikes, specifically FR and VR, get more love on the forums and review sites? They seem to be a great bang for the buck and I really like mine.
What is it about a Domane or Roubaix or __________ that always makes it recommended over the Felt bikes, when the Felt bikes are usually cheaper for higher specs (such as with carbon hoops).
It’s crazy. I got the VR 2020 with Ultegra. It came with Reynolds AR29 carbon hoops. MSRP was 4k. Anything close to it in terms of spec level was at least 500 more or more!
I wish I got the FR, but that is my fault; but if being honest, the VR is probably perfect for me.
Good question. Some people say pro sponsorships don’t matter. But it seems not too long ago when Wout van Aert and Marcel Kittel were winning huge races at the highest level, Felt was on the cusp of becoming a peer with Specialized, Trek - at least in brand recognition. But they kind of withdrew from the big money teams in cycling. They still sponsor Rally, team Twenty20, the U.S. track team, etc. Of course they still sponsor top triathletes. (which is probably far cheaper than like sponsoring a full World Tour team).
But, yeah, they’re all around great bikes, top to bottom of their lineup, all disciplines.
Since Trek and Specialized small road bikes have crappy front end geometry I’d never recommend either of them. Their medium and large road bikes are fine.
It seems that Felt and Cervelo are the only ones that care about their smallest sizes.
The tri team I’ve been for a long time on had a great deal with a local bike shop, so in 2016 I did a custom build starting with a Felt AR FRD frame. My favorite road bike ever.
I am curious, about this, as I am in the market for a new road bike.
How do you feel the new ownership has effected the bikes themselves (marketing aside), are the still really good bikes like they were a few years back?.
Felt is a tiny company. Their budget is pretty low compared to other big brands.
Road bikes isn’t their main niche. They designed a road frame platform that is oriented towards economy: The same mold for electronic and mechanic version bikes (with the crappy chainstay rear brake). Also 99.5% the same for rim and disk brakes. It’s been like that since 2016 or 2017.
That’S why you end up with a cheaper bike.
And they are not as “covered” because they are not sold much outside USA.
I believe that Felt makes a terrific product. Under Jim and Bills stewardship they offered cutting edge bikes across all category’s, and those designs for the most part are still applicable today. The FR1 Disc for example is an amazing road bike. It’s light, stiff, and very comfortable.
That said, most of Felt’s designs are getting long in the tooth by todays standards. Hopefully Rossi will let them bring updated models to market soon.
Im a long time Felt rider (20 years) and ever since Rossingol took over things have not been like when Jim ran the show in my opinion.
They dropped their mtb line, Im glad I snagged a sweet Doctrine before they did away with them.
My guess is largely the service aspect they offer (or don’t). I had an original Felt DA when superbikes were becoming a thing, but Felt was just brutal to deal with for obvious warranty issues making things as difficult as they could. Most of the shops I’ve frequented used to carry them, but stopped for that reason. FWIW, the DA was freaking awesome (at the time), but I wouldn’t buy another Felt based on my experience dealing with the company either.
Veranda’s Willems-Crelan (Wout Van Aert, Stijn Devolder…) rode with Felt bikes in 2017. Really every rider complained about the Felt bikes.
After one year they switched to Stevens bikes.
I have never heard of another team complaining so much about their bikes!
I’ve never heard a complaint about Stevens bikes, then again I’ve never heard of Stevens bikes.
Nice bikes. I considered one when I bought my last road bike but ended up on a Canyon instead.
I mean, I had my issues when I was in the process and first received my bike, but in the end, now a year and a half later, I still like it and think it is high quality. But, when you read these reviews of various bikes, they very rarely speak to customer service of the bike brand itself and only talk about the bike. And I think Felt has a good product. Look at the AR. One of the best (I think that is an objective statement?) but is rarely mentioned or listed in the best aero bike category. Is this marketing deals at play?
For what it’s worth, my issues were about the specs and social media aspect. For the specs, their own website said it came with a “carbon cockpit†(or something to that effect). Aluminum bars came on it and when asked about it, they said they were supposed to be alu and then changed the website. There were also a lot of spelling errors and inconsistencies with the page for that model (and others). I sent them some of them for their awareness and they did change some of them. As for social media aspect, they advertised a 20% off code that would work on anything (and it did!) but I wanted my LBS to get credit for the sale. According to LBS, their Felt contact said that they would never do 20% off and didn’t believe they had until directed to their very own social media page! So left hand and right hand were not communicating.
