aka Tom Reingold
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: New York, NY, and High Falls, NY, USA
Posts: 40,503
Bikes: 1962 Rudge Sports, 1971 Raleigh Super Course, 1971 Raleigh Pro Track, 1974 Raleigh International, 1975 Viscount Fixie, 1982 McLean, 1996 Lemond (Ti), 2002 Burley Zydeco tandem
Mentioned: 511 Post(s)
Tagged: 0 Thread(s)
Quoted: 7348 Post(s)
Today's department store bikes suck less than those of 30 years ago. 30 years ago, I was a bike shop mechanic, and I had customers with department store bikes made by Columbia, Huffy, Murray. Sometimes, the components were designed and made so badly, it didn't appear that they could ever work. The worst one was a Kia made in Korea. As we all know, Korean manufacturing has come a long way. Korean cars are now respected by the car magazines etc. At one shop I worked at, we would have occasional customers who couldn't/wouldn't pay market price for a bike, so we would special order them a Kia. Adjusting the brakes took a long time, and when I was done, they still didn't really work. In 1978, a Peugeot UO8 was about $170, and the Kia was about $80. Big price difference, but if you rode a bike more than five miles a year, I think the Peugeot was a better value.