Why no major German bikes?
 

It seems like most of the major European countries have some sort of bicycling tradition: France, Italy, England, Spain, the Netherlands. It's strange to me that there's no bike maker or bike style associated with Germany, especially
since virtually any other sort of high end manufacturing would include at least one German brand name. Am I simply missing something or is there a reason? Of course, Bosch and Brose make a large percentage of e-bike motors, but even
then they don't brand their own bikes.

Canyon.

and Focus.

Ghost

bulls

Tout Terrain touring bikes were/are leaders in that category.

Corratec are big on MTB (also Cube, I guess, but they’re after my time watching the scene).

Riese und Muller are benchmarks in e-bikes (and touring).

I think that in the touring world, German bikes are king.

Storck

I do know Reise and Muller and Bulls from the e-bike world. I didn't realize Canyon, Focus, and, especially Tout Terrain, were German :} Some of these companies, though, are sort of the exception proving the rule.

I think that when you looking at the touring segment, that’s where German brands are the big brands, but that’s not a segment which is big in the USA, so Americans don’t notice it. And the German brands which dominate that segment are not only bike manufacturers, but component manufacturers, like Tubus, Schwalbe, Pinion, Bosch and Ortlieb.

I think German companies generally have more profitable things to make. Same with the U.S.

I can’t speak too specifically to German bike makers, but generally in terms of international trade, a lot of German companies try to make products in Germany and position themselves as providing top-of-range products, so I’m not surprised that we don’t see German companies trying to compete across the market against Trek, Specialized, etc.

Otto

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...c3501bbda6.png

I recall Dane Mikael Colville-Andersen visited Germany and made fun of their excellent bike lights and the way all the German riders had their tires pumped up to pressure!

Fascinating. I take it that, like China, there are a lot of bikes or bike brands from Germany that we just don't see in the United States. The UK being so low on the list is also something of a surprise.

There's also Cube

Busch & Müller are probably the most acclaimed generator lights out there, and certainly Lezyne has made a presence for their battery lights in the USA as well.

The graphic was for production, and virtually all the Portuguese production goes to other EU brands, including German ones. If the graph showed brand sales by country rather than production, it’d look quite different.

In the BMX scene there is a German brand called "We the People" that's pretty popular. But I think it's a German owned brand but the bikes are made in Taiwan? I could be wrong.

Germans build 'em; Germans buy 'em.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...0eb6a377d5.png

Also, not a complete bike, the Pinion gearboxes are German in design and manufacture.

My kid has a Ghost hardtail, and my next bike is likely to be a Canyon, both German.

Ignaz Schwinn was a German immigrant to the USA. The Schwinns had family 'in the old country'.

"In 1933 Frank Schwinn took a trip to Germany. There he saw a healthy bicycle industry that had developed a strong and utilitarian bicycle for the rough cobbled streets of German cities. It used something called the 'balloon tire'..." - Schwinn Bicycles by Pridmore and Hurd, 1996

Yep, the all-American 26" (ISO559) balloon tire that would go on to shod children's bicycles for decades and birth the mountain bike came from Germany.

By 1935 Frank Schwinn was ready to tackle a restarting of an adult cycle market in America. German-inspired bicycles with Fichtel & Sachs hub gears? Uh, no. Because of the geopolitical landscape, that was pretty much a marketing non-starter. In the late 1930s Schwinn's marketing instead taught American young adults to revere 'English Type' lightweights with Sturmey-Archer hub gears:

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...469b5b1a7b.png

Amazing that Portugal tops the list when it comes to bicycle production. It's also somewhat surprising that bike sales in Italy is so much lower than in France and the UK- countries with roughly similar population counts.