Raleigh - The demise of a British Icon?

[DeletedUser006]

Raleligh Bikes always have a place in my heart, Boxer, Strika, Grifter and Ultra burners were my Child hood bikes, I will never forget the 1st time seeing a Raleigh Maverik with all those gears so wanted one but was not allowed one, I did eventually get a Raleigh mountain bike after I had saved up enough from working at local Raleigh shop, (a 1990 Purple Mirage 1st one in the shop) ,this was back in 1990 to 1992 and to me was the pinical of Raleigh bikes they were producing some crap such as mustang and activator etc which were sold by the lorry load but the Dynatec range was such a step up from these standard heavy items with BMX headsets, bottom brackets and blinking central ridge tyres :roll:. Unfortunatley Raleigh would bring out cool top end bikes and then copy them in the lead vesions which always caused confusion and still does now on ebay :roll:

The Raleigh MTB's that are up there for me are:

Dynatech 1st generation Odyssey , Diablo etc
Thunder road
summit
Maverick mk1's
Supertuff Burner


I think that raleigh looked too much into mass production and numbers rather than concentrating on the larger picture, I think that Anthony has definitley summed it up.

Good thread btw

 

[sq225917]

They made some big mistakes.

The board ignored the bird....
and they missed golden ip development opportunities.

 

[m-trax]

By the time I came into mtb, Raleigh were already using the M-Trax brand name. This was clearly a way of trying to sell bikes that were perfectly good bikes but wouldn't have a hope of selling if they were branded as Raleighs, because everybody knew that serious bikers would laugh at you if you had a Raleigh. Raleigh made mountain bikes, and indeed sold more than any other firm, but they weren't really mtbs, in the sense that you never actually saw a Raleigh in the countryside. They were all in sheds or used for going to ASDA.

You see I always thought the opposite when I came into MTB. Raleigh had the mass produced bikes for the kiddies at christmas - but they also had the serious quality bikes for the serious MTB'r. When I stepped up from a cheap and nasty Halfords Appollo, Raleigh was the only brand I was looking at, at the time. That is when I got my M-Trax back in 1995. I grew up with Raleigh - I had the Raleigh BMX in the 80s, and a Raleigh MTB passed down from my brother from the 80's.

The great marketing which I did appreciate was the photo and details of the person who built my bike. Class!