As Cyclist magazine editor, I receive three main types of letters from readers. Type one begins, ‘Dear Pete, love the magazine, and you might be interested in publishing the story of the time I…’ Type two goes, ‘Love the magazine, but gravel riding is the work of the Devil and should be…’ Type three says, ‘Love the magazine, but how on Earth is anyone supposed to be able to afford the bikes you review?’
Type three is among the most popular (note that no one writes to say they don’t love the magazine, bless you all). And what can I say? It’s true, the bikes we showcase are often really expensive. Recently we have covered a Giant TCR at £12,000, a Colnago C68 Allroad at £14,000 and a Seven Axiom at £14,300. Even our latest issue (available now at the Cyclist Shop) includes an Orbea at £12,000. You can get a good second-hand car for that money. So is this just the bike industry taking us all for a bunch of mugs?
Actually, I would argue that we should all stop getting so hot under the collar whenever we’re presented with a lot of noughts.
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Splashing the cash
Bikes are high-tech. Taking something unbelievably light and making it even lighter requires huge investment in materials and moulds, plus months of trying carbon fibre layups and creating and testing prototypes. Then there’s aerodynamics – CFD modelling and testing in wind-tunnels – and developing features such as fully internal cable routing. And that’s all before the costs of manufacturing, marketing, UCI registration, pro team sponsorship, global distribution, retail overheads and ten-year contracts with Mathieu van der Poel are taken into account.
When you compare a top-end race bike to something like an Hermès Birkin handbag – £25,000-plus for a few bits of leather stitched together – then suddenly the bike seems like a bargain. And I’m pretty certain the Hermès Birkin hasn’t been optimised for minimal drag at 12° yaw.
What’s more, comparing a bike to a designer handbag isn’t entirely flippant, because the bikes featured in Cyclist are luxury items. Just like the clothes you wear and the handbag you carry, the bike you ride says a lot about the person you are. Like it or not, road bikes are status symbols, and brands want their bikes to be highly covetable. They do this partly by looks and performance, partly by association with top pros and partly by price.
An expensive bike is a desirable bike and the most expensive is the most desirable. This is why if brand X prices its top bike at £10,000, brand Y feels the need to price its own at £11,000. Of course, this results in a pricing arms race to the point where the pricetag ceases to have any relation to the intrinsic worth of the bike and everyone sits down to write a letter to the editor of a cycling magazine.
But do you know what? It’s all OK. Why? Because no one is making you buy the top-end bike in any brand’s range.
The top bike (and we usually feature the top model of any line-up) is the shop window, the tease, the drool-worthy lure, built for the pros and bearing that outrageous pricetag. But further down the line-up will be very similar-looking bikes of almost equal performance and at a much more accessible price point. Those are the ones you buy, and they’re worth it because they will boast the tech that has trickled down from the top.
See, the prices aren’t mad. They are like they are for a reason, and it all makes sense if you can just get past the initial rage and incredulity that is generated by all those noughts.
Finishing touches
Having said that, I do have a bone to pick with the big brands and their top-end models. I saw a guy the other day riding a sleek black-and-red Colnago, and stuffed in his bottle cages were a pair of bright yellow PowerBar water bottles. It totally ruined the look.
So come on, bike brands. If you’re going to put a five-figure pricetag on your super-luxury, high-performance race bike, at least give us some matching bidons. I bet Hermès wouldn’t make that mistake.
• This article originally appeared in issue 153 of Cyclist magazine. Click here to subscribe
You’ll never convince me that bike manufacturers are not gouging their customers. I just bought a brand new Yamaha MT09 motorcycle that is loaded with tech and all the latest gadgets , yet it was considerably cheaper than my bicycle. How is that possible ?
Sorry, all I read in that article was “Dear Advertiser, we’re trying any justification possible….your account is important to us.”
The problem with super expensive top end road bikes is that they are used to justify the price of bikes all the way down. It’s the classic sales man pitch; show you something expensive and out of your price range first then the next thing they show you (which is what they wanted you to buy all along) will seem a reasonable price. If they’d shown you that first you would have said it was too expensive.
£3k entry level bikes? No thanks.
When you tell me to stop griping about the price of bikes it just confirms to me that they have you, and/or the publishing company you work for, in their pocket and you are stuck up in your ivory tower, most removed from the rest of us just trying to enjoy a simple past time that doesn’t require much of the r&d the professional racers require. Your article, while great publicity, is not realistic and telling of the struggles we currently all face with affordability – if anything it is dismissive and obnoxious in that context.
You strike a chord with identifying the bike as a luxury item. It is not. It is the one vehicle that is, and should remain, accessible and environment friendly for all. You do a disservice to that effort with your pandering to big bike.
You poor comparison to luxury handbags is laughable. Did you ever see the price tiers for an automobile? There are many… And your luxury bike can be at the Pinnacle of luxury and technology for that highest price point. The problem is even the trickle down effect of research and development, is no longer being made accessible as it once was. Now a mostly priced bike is made to break and not pleasant to ride.
You commentary is not well backed up and not welcome. Do better and fight for us to have a a decent bike for a decent price.
I purchased a new road bike in 1990 for $5,200 . This is equivalent to $12,495, june , 2024. It never got easier, we just went faster .
However , what has increased is the take of the Taxman . Let me tell you how it will be .
Nobody cares about the tip end.
We complain because they use these absurdly expensive bikes to make phrases like “the 2k entry level bike” and “the 8k mid level bike” or the “bargain 6k bike” possible
Love that you guys are reviewing bikes that cost more than £3000 and not posting “cons” High price and have been doing for as long as I’ve read your magazine since 2014, keep up the good work
BS, are you telling me it it costs more to engineer a motorcycle than a bicycle? I can think of 100 other things that have more moving parts and are more complex than a bike. 20 years ago bikes were just as light with welded tubes.
I think we are all adjusting to this new market model because not many years ago most people could afford the same bike that the pros rode. Now most people can’t. But most people shouldn’t be looking to buy a £12k road bike because it won’t be right for them and they don’t need it unless they are in or on the cops of the world of elite cycling. They’ll get just as much out of the second, third or fourth model in the range. As an ex-roadie in my late fifties (oh faded glory, not), I am happiest on my Fairlight Strael all year round (build cost c£3.5k) because it just works for me and I don’t care if something in carbon would be marginally quicker. Just enjoy!
Great bait. I’ll bite.
This article misses the real problem with pricing in the industry. It’s not top-end bikes that people complain about.
In 2017 I bought a race-worthy aluminum bike with 2×11 105 and rim brakes for $1300. The equivalent bike in Specialized’s lineup now costs $2500-3k. That formula of bike (good aluminum, 105 mech, rim brakes) is dying.
Maybe disc brakes, carbon fiber, electronic shifting, one-piece bars, integrated cables etc. are “better”. It doesn’t change the fact that the intersection between simple, affordable and competitive has gotten smaller.