Originally Posted by
mstateglfr
Have you test ridden every bike you have owned?
That is a fair point but considering minus one bike currently all of my bikes have been built from the frame up that would be a hard proposition but that one bike I did test ride extensively. I also did test ride my Langster before purchase and then the frame cracked and they sent me a new one. The Co-Motion was a semi-custom build (talking frame here).
If I was buying a new fully built bike I would most certainly test ride it especially if I was comparing it to other bikes and very unsure and looking at unimportant stuff to make my decision. Having ridden a lot of different bikes there are certainly differences between similar models from different brands and while they all might come to a point they have enough subtle to not so subtle differences to make the test ride worthwhile.
If you know geometry and are good at figuring all of that out and know the frame shape and parts and all that are going to work for you, then yeah less needed but for situations like this I would go for it. Heck if someone could have built my bikes beforehand and allowed me to test ride before I got them, that would have been great.