Saturday, January 07, 2012

Silly bike of the week!

Check it out - meet your $5600 townie!

To be fair, this looks like a nice bike, and I'm sure it would be a blast to ride around town on. But the price just makes me laugh - and I especially like that the company has the audacity to charge $750 for an Alfine hub (which retails for something like half that).

No, it doesn't beat the infamous Firefly that BSNYC mocked... at least you can mount fenders. And I'm guessing it's half the price. But it still makes me laugh.

11 comments:

Francois said...

OK, the bike is silly, but I found the reasoning behind not so silly (like what he says about bike shops). And at least it's not made by XACD... So at the end it means a few hundred (rich) guys will start to ride a bike, and this bike will be made in the U.S. Why not ?

Walt said...

I just thought it was humorous - if you were someone that picky (and willing to spend that kind of money) why not just have Blacksheep (who is obviously the builder) build you a custom one for less money?

But yeah, made in the USA, good parts, nothing wrong with it if it makes you happy and you ride it.

Matt B. said...

Taking other recent posts into account, I suppose the question now is this: did you stumble upon this while looking at curvy titanium bike porn?

er said...

It's nice of him to make a bike that wont creak. With claims like that, it's no wonder it costs as much as it does, the technology must be unfathomable!

Buzz said...

Well at least the crafstmanship on a Firefly blow that work away IMO. Look closely at the weld were the right fork tube joins the hood on the fork dropout. Looks like it's burned thru at the edge to me??

Other Matt B said...

Actually it looks like Lynskey is the builder from the caption of the first pic and the line in the 4th paragraph, although my first thought was BS as well. That fork would be far too flexy I think for any serious riding?

BigHank53 said...

The last time I stuck my head into Mellow Johnny's (Lance's shop in Austin) I saw a $5000+ steel townie. Singlespeed. Lovely bike, but it wasn't worth more than half the asking price, and it didn't do anything that a $1000 import wouldn't do just as well.

What Paul Budnitz does understand, though, is that there are a surprising number of people in this country with mind-boggling amounts of money to burn. There are also a depressing number of people who would like you to believe they're in the first group, and are willing to spend what it takes on status symbols to indicate that.

Sunday morning in my paper I saw a review of an Audi A7: $68,000! I'm sure it's a lovely car, but who has that kind of spare change to spend on a car? I've bought houses for less.

Meriwether said...

This is an awesome bike. Now I can ride from my morning work location (Vic's) to my afternoon work location (the Trident) in record time! I can probably knock off at least 30 seconds from my personal best! Well worth the money if you ask me.

An yes, it looks like he did get the dropout a bit hot on that weld...hmm.

Invisible Hand said...

FWIW, I thought that the Alfine 11 is a pretty expensive IGH. Not as expensive as a Rohloff; but pretty expensive nonetheless.

Walt said...

IH - They retail for somewhere between $500 and $600, depending on how much you shop around. Or you can pay $750 for one from these guys...

Invisible Hand said...

Hah! You mean they are giving me the opportunity to pay an extra $150 if I buy a frame? Hard to pass up an opportunity like that! ;-)