Seriously… How do you choose which bike to get? Whilst grinding away on the hamster wheel during today’s stage of the Tour de Garage, it occurred to me that there hasn’t been any real logic involved in the acquisition of most of the bikes I’ve had over the years.
Obviously, where you’re going to ride this velocipede has a great deal to do with the first part of your decision process; but even amongst the general categories, the choices are legion, and possible delineations even finer.
For the sake of argument let’s say you’re looking for a ‘road’ bike. A brief spin of the interwebs avails us with 87 models of Treks in the ‘road’ category. Not to be outdone, Specialized has 16 distinct categories within the general ‘road’ description, encompassing 81 different models and 13 framesets on offer, I counted them myself…
Last I checked, a person was either male or female, so if we pick ‘male’, that whittles the Specialized’ list to 58 bikes and 12 framesets. I know this seems silly, even within the ‘road’ category, a person is going to have a better idea of what they’re looking for and be able to narrow the field significantly.
I guess the next cut is how you’re going to ride the bike, long distance or short spins, MUPs or mountains, trophy blasts or scenic trips, and of course, panniers or team car…
But even if you have the type of riding you’ll be doing narrowed way down, you still have a myriad of choices. If we just look at the Trek offerings, there are 11 different Madone models from 3.1 to 6.9SSL not including the special editions.
Presumably, all of the Madones will do an acceptable job of riding down the road, as well as climbing and descending mountains. It would seem that your wallet has the final say in the amount of refinement you will have to find acceptable.
Once you and your CFO have determined what price you are able or want to pay to play, the choice doesn’t get any easier unless you’re willing to stay in the Trek store and buy the model that matches your budget. If you look outside the Trek store, you will find at least as many different brands that have competing models with the Trek in your budget, as Trek has different models.
All of these different competing brands at any given price point are going to have slightly, or not so slightly different geometry and fit parameters. Having good fit numbers will help to cull the list some. Unless you have fit requirements that are more than a standard deviation from the norm, chances are that there will be a lot of viable choices.
Another quick survey of the interwebs provided the list of the bikes used by the 18 pro tour teams. All of the bikes used by those teams come in a size that would work for me, some better than others, but I think I could get a reasonable fit on any of them.
How to choose?
I think it’s fair to say that any bike used by a pro tour team is up to the task. Even with all the money the bike companies have to throw at the teams in order to sponsor them, I don’t think any team would accept an inferior bike. So they’re all ‘Pro Tour Caliber’…
The CFO would have something to say on the matter, the cheapest frame that I could find a US price for is the Helium used by Lotto at $2899, the middle of the road is the Pinarello used by Movistar and Sky at $5750, and taking the prize as the most expensive frame on the pro tour… The Cervelo R5ca at $9800…
Specialized may actually hold the record with the McLaren version of the Venge, but they don’t list the frame separately, only the $18,000 complete bike…
Just playing ‘what if’ here… Let’s say that money is no object, you can get whatever you want, and you’re just trying to get the best bike for you…
Not that it matters, the same scenario exits at virtually all price points…
How to choose?
You can read the marketing propaganda until your eyes cross, but does that stuff really help? If the marketeers are to be believed, their bicycles have gotten 10 to 20% stiffer every year… They should be completely unyielding by now…
What’s with all of the acronyms? SDS, iSC, TCC, IMP… Really?
You can read all the reviews on the whole wide web, but the reviewers aren’t you, and what they like, you might not, here is but one example…
Don’t get me wrong, I think that in general, these ‘shootouts’ try to give valuable information, but I don’t doubt that if you put ten testers to the task of riding all the bikes, you’d get ten different finish orders.
Consider also, that tires and wheels have a major influence on how a bike rides and handles. It could very well be that the difference between bikes in factory spec is more than made up for with a wheel and/or tire change…
So, part of the problem as I see it, is that it’s not like there are a lot of these bikes around, in your size, available to test ride. Even if you manage to test ride one, is a spin around the block enough to decide?
What if you were able to find one to test, and ride it on your home turf for a week? You may be able to tell if you liked it, but what about compared to something else? Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to do your own ‘shootout’?
You can test drive cars for as long as you can put up with car salesman, and it’s always been this way, even when cars cost less than bicycles do now. If you so desire, you can also rent most cars for as long as you can pay for it, and drive it ‘till your heart’s content.
Even if you make a mistake, or your circumstances change, and you need a different car, there is a market for used cars. You’ll lose money selling or trading your car, but at least you can get a reasonable deal.
Try selling a high end bike… fleabay can be, how should I say… problematic… and you can forget about trading it in…
You ‘pays your money, and takes your chances’… The bicycle industry would have us plunk down our money in a manner that would make Vegas proud…
It occurs to me that perhaps the bikes I have had that were really good, and there have been several, were just down to dumb luck…
God really does look out for children and fools…
