A bit of a rant...

[Simon]

Sorry, but I had to get this off my chest. A fairly well-known bike shop is clearing out Merlin C110 carbon frames on their eBay page.

Leaving aside all questions as to who would pay £2000 for such a monstrosity, can anyone actually tell me they see beauty in this bike? If the answer is yes, put your beer down and focus on;

1. Those hideous bolted-on titanium droputs
2. The headtube that looks like it's trying to seperate from the rest of the frame
3. The bulging pustule that is the bottom bracket area

To top it all off, one of the photos is taken on a white sheet with oriental writing, so I'll bet these cost about £4.62 to make somewhere in Taiwan. To calm you down, I've enclosed another photo of what the Merlin frames used to look like before ABG d!cked with them....

 

[tintin40]

Yet anther example of a bike being destroyed by a take over :roll:

 

[amt27]

ha, when i first looked at your pic I thought the frame name said MERLIA, and thought who the hell are Merlia, then I read your post,

not many modern road frames look nice at all,

 

[Jones]

That truly is revolting :?

 

[hamster]

Same as the complete hash they made of Litespeed. Litespeeds are even breaking these days due to shoddy welding, poor quality control and nobody appearing to do any engineering analysis of the stresses.

A complete lack of pride in their brand or workmanship. Shame on them!

And then they did the bonkers thing of making Alu Litespeeds..and now Carbon Merlins. If these morons were in charge of other brands we'd have BMW rollerskates, Nokia Christmas lights, and Chanel toilet duck.

I'm just lucky that my Litespeed is one of the original Lynskey-built ones..!

I'd better go and calm down...grumpy old man.

 

[Agency_Scum]

Simon,
THANK YOU! I thought I was the only one in the world who thought Merlin's across-the-board change of graphics made them all look like bloody Saracens!

 

[lelobysfoot]

merlin

I'm with you there. Thats a Taiwanese or perhaps Chinese disaster there. As profit margins go up, taste goes out. Even the latest C50 isn't very pretty.
It gets worse: some of these manufacturers don't even get patents or intellectual rights to their products (well why would they with something so bad as this?) and the final suppliers can put any kind of 'claim' rubbish all over the frames. Like 'Merlin Design' or 'Designed in the USA' or whatever.
Some of these frames ride beautifully though. Like the Focus Cayo (from Wiggle). I have one and by Jove its comfy !!!

EDIT: I've just noticed the eBay ads for these things and they are selling them for more than I payed for my complete bike. Surely nobody will buy these balls-ups?

 

[rob brown]

A 4.30pm on a Friday job if ever I saw one. What is going on with that head tube? I can't believe anyone who works in design would consider that acceptable.

I always thought companies like Merlin and litespeed prided themselves on building ti bikes that would last a lifetime. I wouldn't let that in the garage for 5 minutes.

 

[bordercollie1]

I just went to the Ibis website looking for 'new retro' and found somthing looking very similar to that Merlin.

I am struggling to think of a single '90s MTB brand that is still true to its roots?

any ideas??

 

[mauricer]

same for the KLEIN range after Trek took over. Shame!