Cheap full suspension monstrosities. Why ??

its all marketing. downhill is the glamerous side of mountain biking and its been all over the media, full suspension is everywhere. i think its fairly natural for meople to want to try and emulate full suspension bikes as they generally dont understand what they are (and more importantly, are not )getting for their money

It goes to the same people who think they need a crew cab pickup to take the kids to school and go to Asda.

reanimation":1uuwoi3d said:

Why do joe public have a mental blockage to see spending more than 89.99 (anywhere other than a supermarket) unacceptable? an impossible discussion, in one ear out the other! :roll: :?:

Suppose they will hardly use it but a honest £200 or sale bike would be miles better and more inspiring to use.

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A friend of mine (I'll call him John... ) asked me if I thought it was worth his while to buy one of those £89.99 full suspension things and seemed quite put out when I just told him that it was a pile of crap and a complete waste of money. Now this is a usually fairly intelligent guy - he is an air traffic controller, (so he must be?) plus he's not short of a bob or two. He is , however, easily taken in by advertising spiel of all kinds .... :roll:

Eventually he bought some £300 Specialised hardtail so presumably he did take my advice. The thing is, the same people who pay hundreds each month in car loan repayments won't consider spending even £500 on a basic but decent bike, nor will they buy secondhand stuff. Of course, they happily buy big f**k off televisions (to light up the neighbourhood - my pet hate, seeing those things through front windows :roll: ) and have to have their new (or nearly new) car every two or three years plus their BlackBerrys, Playstations, X-Boxes, Sky Plus, their 12 Megapixel cameras (when they never print anything anyway :roll, their Satnav and all that other stuff just so essential to a "cool" lifestyle.

So the crap bikes are seen as just another "lifestyle" thing, but they don't get used for very long because - hey :idea: they don't ride themselves and anyway it's not really so "cool" to arrive home covered in all shades of mud, kack and sweat and scratched to pieces by thorns and briars, scarified by rocks and then have to wash and maintain the bike and their gear before doing it all again next weekend.
So the poor bike gets thrown in the garage along with the dirty trainers and cheapo helmet, and the usual toys (see above) are back in favour.....

So, we just have to realise that what we do (ride, restore and maintain mountain bikes, clear and build trails, negotiate RoW for new routes), is a "niche" thing. Hell, some people are even peculiar enough to ride bikes with one f**king gear ("Bet you've only got a really small telly and a crappy old car too, haven't you mate")
I'm quite happy to keep it that way too - I really don't want all these other dickheads tearing up my local trails, because I'm damn sure that they wouldn't be willing to give up a Sunday afternoon in front of the telly (Is it big enough sweetheart, or shall we get a really huge one next ??) to go out and do a bit of trail maintenance.

So be thankfull that crap, cheap and overweight bikes exist because they act as a very effective filter. Anyone who gets initiated on one of those and still wants more must be made of the "right stuff"

Spot on post Andy.

The problem is that most people tend to buy BSOs for their kids who simply cannot put up with the 'shame' of not having full suspension and disc brakes no matter how bad they are.

For a lot of them it is just a case of the 'use and throw away' mentality that afflicts most of the population. For some it's just not deemed good value to buy something remotely decent so go to Asda/Argos/Aldi (delete as necessary), haven't the first idea about how it works and then go to the LBS shouting at the person in there who is trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear :roll:

Others are just downright skinflints who don't realise the fun they could be having riding a decent bike for an extra £200 or so. I put my Kona together for about £250 in the end and I can guarantee I will have much more fun on a considerably safer and better built (IMO.... I trust my bike wrangling skills even if other people might not ) bike despite the fact that it is fully rigid and has canti brakes on it.

Thus endeth the sermon from Jon

LOL: singlespeed and crap car. Sounds just like me!

Beat up Kona singlespeed, Saab 9000. Each still faster than an BSO or Nissan Navara.

All the above posts just about cover it - clever marketing to stupid people who dont know any better.

Parents buy them becuase kids go through stuff very quickly and bikes are cheaper to replace than repair.

hamster":16mjr2f1 said:

LOL: singlespeed and crap car. Sounds just like me!

Beat up Kona singlespeed, Saab 9000. Each still faster than an BSO or Nissan Navara.

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Don't start me on those Nissan Navara things either - I'm lucky to live in a little village (Ballaugh) but in the "big city" (as I refer to Douglas) it seems like every other family are running round in one of those.
It's just more "lifestyle" bollocks - why do people think that what car they drive says anything (good) about them ??

Well she took some persuading :? but the Baracuda is now in the skip

She's now the proud owner of a virtually unused Diamondback Topanga for £50

Well said Andy.

Yep its crazy. Occasional riders should opt for at lest a bike shop bike, there is surpisingly some reasonable bikes between 200-300 for light users, GF Hardrock did it all for a few years, well not much actual mountain bikeing and I didnt like RST's at all.


No they are nut jobs, proiorities all wrong and not as clued up as they think.


right here: 5 simple bikes, half a complicated one and some silly bikes in bits, An inherited good old CRT TV (sh1te on telly anyway), and a £19 Ebay JVC CRT, 20Y.O Technics and Pentium 4 non laptops, and a 20 year old shagged Fiesta van (along with 5 other wrecks/projects)!

Sounds like your dog's a good judge