Sitting in an airbnb in Wilmington….tabletop photo book of old stuff. Penny farthing photo from 1870……cost six months wages. Lets say half of $50k today. $25k buys anything you desire. Okie. I will hush about expensive bikes while I own three expensive bikes.
Just interesting.
A competitive race bike has literally never been less expensive (in relative terms) than one is now.
I’ve related this anecdote on here before, but Greg Lemond once said to me that “a current off the shelf bike with 105 is better than anything I rode in the tour”. That was close to 20 years ago, and bikes have only gotten better since.
Considering that a top of the line road or tri bike buys you a couple of race ready MX bikes, yeah they are not that expensive…
Sure, today’s 105 is better than Dura Ace from 20 years ago. Anyway, the group sets aren’t ideal examples, because the difference between them is nowadays only weight.
The problem is, that you’re racing in 2020s, not 2000s.
Marketing hype aside how much faster are modern bikes than something 20 years old? I’ve read the original P5 (2012) though not 20 years old is just as fast if not faster? For most age groupers not averaging 40+kph is there really much difference?
P5six has been one of the most aero successful bikes, yes. Has been, not “had been”. I was lucky enough to ride a P5three from the Team Dimension Data, with exposed front brake, as my first TT bike. It came with Enve 7.8 tubulars, built on Chris King hubs. Speedy but rough.
It’s more about the development of the whole package: bike, suit, helmet, custom cockpit, wheels, tires. Wetsuits on the swim and carbon shoes with energy returning foam on the run etc.
Groupsets are only part of it. Wheels are dramatically better. Tires - especially at entry level - are dramatically better. Bars/stems; lighter stiffer, stronger. Framesets? ditto. Pedals and shoes? No question. Let’s not even talk about things like clothing and helmets. Or eyewear. All for less money, adjusted for inflation.
The MX bikes are inexpensive, but they get you with the orthopedic surgery.
Super deep dive: Why are modern bikes so expensive? - Escape Collective
One of the more interesting things in that article is that when you account for inflation, bikes are actually a little bit cheaper today than 20 years ago.
Sure, that’s why I switched sports, but the cost difference can only be explained by us consumers being too compliant.
Economies of scale couldn’t possibly be a factor here?
Thank god for all the price-compliant customers driving massive industry profits!
So you think there are more Mx bikes sold than bicycles? I would think the opposite by at least an order of magnitude.
I have a personal belief also in the fact recent generations don’t know how to do anything themselves repair or install wise for anything. Cars, bikes, homes. There goes a boatload of money there.
If I paid new msrp and had a LBS do all my bike work I wouldn’t have much at all. All my bikes are used, self repair, etc. House same way, I have done bath and kitchen remodeling both houses we lived at.
I see these generations paying hardware stores to hang a basic ceiling fan.
Pretty fat generalization, but not entirely inaccurate. There’s plenty of people I (27 y/o M) know and see on social media that have great incomes that will do the work themselves to save a few bucks. I love doing the regular maintenance on my car, and can’t wait to own a house and knock down some drywall and studs. But I won’t touch anything MEP related.
Some people, sounds like me and you, enjoy knowing how things work and figuring it out ourselves. Others don’t, and that’s fine. They probably do other things better than you or I.
You might be right on this, but you’re probably wrong on the cost/benefit considerations.
For example, I wouldn’t even try to attempt to install a ceiling-mounted fan in my house. I’m handy enough to know how badly I’ll botch it AND know how much time I’ll waste trying to do it. I will however, usually youtube how to do it and see if it seems reasonable/unreasonble.
I can earn enough to install 3-4 of those in the time it will take me to futz through one badly.
I will add that I learned enough to wrench my mechanical bike all the way, from nothing to full riding. In my opinion, it totally was NOT worth it. I’m strongly of the opinion that the people who are doing this always hugely oversell how valuable it is and how much money they are saving, when my experience has been the opposite, and I think my experience is MUCH closer to reality as someone who doesn’t have access to an experienced friend or mentor, so I have to learn everything myself, from youtube, etc. I am absolutely of the opinion that it’s 100% ok to have the bike store do your maintenance and repairs. If you aren’t maintaining an entire stable of bikes, they will do it better and more reliably than you will almost every time, and you’ll save gobs of time AND money as a result. Bike stores can also try out a zillion parts that may or may not fit, whereas you as an individual will waste a lot of time and money ordering various sizes of bolts, etc. just to find the one that fits.
I recently upgraded to hydraulic disc brakes and after watching the bleed videos, there’s no way I’m going to take the time to learn to do that, given that I’ll probably need to do it once a year or even that.
Sure, there are a lot more bicycles produced overall than there are motorcycles, but let’s compare like for like. The average cost of a new bicycle in the United States is around $400 (To relate this back to the OP, that’s $83 in 1978 value).
The least expensive (new) MX bike in the shop a mile from my house is $4k.
The actual cost of a factory team MX bike is never going to be better than guesswork - because you can’t actually buy one - but is likely in the $100k range. An off the shelf KYB A-Kit suspension setup alone runs over $7k. You can buy an exact replica of any of the bikes that won any professional race on the World Tour last season for a retail price as low as $10,000 or $11,000.
Bicycles that are produced at scale are incredibly inexpensive. As are motorcycles. Handbuilt race machines run anywhere from somewhat less inexpensive to nose-bleedingly expensive. Most folks either aren’t aware of it, or conveniently forget it for a multitude of reasons, but all carbon bikes are hand made. Discussions of manufacturing scale definitely tend to overlook this, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true, and not a factor. You can see how this manifests in the relative cost of other pro-level gear, for eg: a single CCM Vizion Hockey stick retails for $400 (a teammate of mine broke one in the first five minutes he owned it, ouch!) relative to other products made under the same manufacturing conditions and constraints, bicycles are a bargain. And, to be brutally frank, if consumer price conditioning has had any effect on the bike industry, it’s the opposite of what you suggest. Consumers, generally, simply aren’t willing to accept price levels that are necessary to support wage structures equivalent to those paid to employees of comparable skill/experience/expertise in most other industries. It would probably be eye opening for many people to compare the average wages of McDonalds employees to bike shop employees.