SethAZ 

Look, I'm open to the possibility that what we saw in that video is just evidence of a really crappily made, unsafe bike that could have killed someone in an instant if the wrong pothole were hit at the wrong time. I mean, I sort of threw up in my mouth a little while watching the video too.

All I'm saying is that a product development cycle typically includes consideration being given to how something will actually be manufactured. I'm no product design engineer, so I'm just trying to look at this with a very small amount of information and a little common sense. I am assuming that a company like BMC will set some design and safety criteria in place for the product they want to produce. This will answer questions like what sort of loads it must endure, what sort of durability it must show over time, as well as everything else like geometry, flexibility, stability in various dimensions, etc. Knowing what they (or their contract manufacturer) is actually capable of building, they will produce a design that they believe satisfies these criteria. If they are only capable of sloppy manufacturing, this may require compensation such as thicker layups, more reinforcement in certain areas, or whatever it takes to achieve their design criteria despite the sloppy construction. Then, during QC, they will evaluate the product and certify it if they believe that the design criteria were satisfied.

All I'm saying is that we don't really know, just based on some of the flaws we see after cutting it open, or how ugly it is or all the wrinkles of excess resin that accumulated in various places, etc. whether the design criteria were actually met. All we know is that that year the manufacturer wasn't capable of as neat of work as some other manufacturers.

If you've ever looked at a lot of old Soviet military hardware you get a better understanding of what I mean here. I mean, up close an AK-47 or a Soviet tank or other equipment just looks like crap. There are machining marks all over the place, things aren't always flat, nicely ground or machined, etc. Judged from a western quality sensibility it all just looks like pure unusable junk. But they clearly shoot, move, and are as durable as they need to be, because the designers knew what manufacturing capabilities would be used to produce it, and they designed around this to achieve whatever criteria were actually important to them.