Are MTBs better value than road bikes?

Even if road bikes were £0, the £4k mtb would be better value 😉

I think road bike designers and Engineers maybe spend more time and effort to minimise the amount of bike you get.

In other words their effort goes into weight saving rather than supplying suspension technology and decent kinematics etc....

...but it's very difficult to prove or demonstrate something like that :o)

If it's got Ultegra and decent wheels, then it may be comparable, but you've got around £1k of suspension on a decent MTB. Price up frame only maybe to compare ?

But if you buy a mountain bike you have to budget for a vw van, fitting it out as a camper, pies, fags for when you stop after every blue run, new wheels, new hope brakes, new avid brakes, three or four droppers, an Enfield himalaya, bigger clothes because of the pies, a trail dog, a pizza oven. It’s an endless cycle of expense 😉

This has always been the situation IMO, but you did used to be able to get a semi-decent road bike with 105 for a grand.

No chance of that now, even from Boardman, and the big brands have got very ambitious with their pricing.

Yeah, a lot of MTB prices have got silly too, but I think there's an element of roadies having the same disposable income but not needing so much stuff - so they just get charged the same anyway.

What the market will bear, basically.

Road bike is usually a longer-lasting purchase than a mtb. The bolloxology cycle turns more slowly for road, so it's a less frequent purchase.

In other words their effort goes into weight saving

There was a time when Specialized’s lightest (adult) frame, across all disciplines, was the Epic HT. Not sure if it’s still the case though.

Yeah I think when manufacturers realised that they could sell bikes over ten grand, it probably shifted the market somewhat.

 but you did used to be able to get a semi-decent road bike with 105 for a grand.

I bought a Ribble R872 back in 2014(ish I think) and it was carbon, full Ultegra with callipers, admittedly aluminium but still Mavic wheels for just about £1800, I dread to think what that bike would cost now.

You are correct, and things get even worse value the more you spend.

E.g. the new Specialized Tarmac SL8 - the 'pro' model with ultegra groupset + heavier frame and wheels costs £8000. The S Works model costs 4 grand(!) more but comes with a slightly lighter groupset, a lighter frame (same shape/design) and lighter wheels (again, exactly the same shape as the cheaper model). So £4000 extra just to save the weight of one medium water bottle.

NB/ There's a thread on weightweenies forum which is dedicated solely to the Tarmac SL8 and it currently stands at 114 pages long. A fool and his money...

But roadies and MTBers if we're being honest love all that shit, we're still obsessed with weight, we're still mesmerised by "look how shiny it is" 🤣

we only have ourselves to blame really.

A reminder that’s there’s a carbon, aero, 7.2kg, Dura Ace Di2 road bike in the classifieds for a grand. 😉

I bought a Ribble R872 back in 2014(ish I think) and it was carbon, full Ultegra with callipers, admittedly aluminium but still Mavic wheels for just about £1800, I dread to think what that bike would cost now.

Ribble R872 with Tiagra, £799.99:

https://www.ribblecycles.co.uk/ribble-r872-black-shimano-tiagra-1/

Ultegra rim groupset, £699.99:

https://www.merlincycles.com/shimano-ultegra-r8000-11-speed-groupset-102895.html

Mavic Ksyrium S wheels, £414:

https://www.merlincycles.com/mavic-ksyrium-s-clincher-road-wheelset-295741.html

So £113.98 more, with a free Tiagra groupset and set of training wheels 😀

I see the new Campag Super Record groupset has come out, yours for only four and a half thousand of your British pounds...

https://www.bikeradar.com/news/campagnolo-super-record-wireless-groupset/

Frame weight. Looking at fat creations insta feed seemed to suggest the biggest weight saving came from removing 5 paint schemes and a respray from the big manufacturers

Just look at the price of road sti's, they're effectively a brake and shifter combined but they've always costs multiple times more than the separate mtb parts. The mechs are less complex as well because you don't need a clutch or a different 1x design.

Technology is improving though so lower spec kit is much more capable than it ever used to be.

Happy to be corrected, but I was under the impression that - like in MTBing - there was a bit of an acknowledgement that low weight isn't everything on road bikes now.

Basically we added weight with discs and realised the bikes weren't slower (mine was faster despite 1kg more weight). And aero is cooler now too.

But then I suppose there's scope to charge £10k+ just to get the weight back under 7kg again.

So £113.98 more, with a free Tiagra groupset and set of training wheels

Wow, that's a bunch cheaper than I expected!

I've often wondered if the prices just tend to whatever the purchasing power of the main demographic is -- so road bikes end up more expensive because the consumers are wealthier

It's possible that the profit margins don't even go up and money just gets spent on utterly marginal performance gains and marketing

A reminder that’s there’s a carbon, aero, 7.2kg, Dura Ace Di2 road bike in the classifieds for a grand. 😉

Could you water out and see if it grows into a 60cm frame?

Basically we added weight with discs and realised the bikes weren’t slower (mine was faster despite 1kg more weight). And aero is cooler now too.

Do you have any idea how expensive aero is?

Let's face it though, when you're using a mtb as a value comparator there's something seriously wrong with the world!

It depends.....road bikes, especially in recent years, seem to be less good value to me whether you look simply at the sticker price or allow for the extras such as suspension etc which comes with a MTB.  Is that because road cycling is the new golf for the management class and the manufacturers are exploiting the perceived deeper pockets?  But looking at the lifetime costs - breakages, wear and tear or the fact that MTBs seem to have a greater bespoke element which itself encourages tinkering with set-ups, I suspect the MTB might be no less expensive.

Now bikes are light and aero. In previous years you always had to make the choice, but now if you spend enough you get both.

My Emonda SLR disc was under 7kgs. It wasn’t massively slower than my rim braked Aeroad. Even with the Aeroad having 62mm wheels they were fairly similar, Aeroad was the better bike though (and cost £5k less)

But I do agree that the pricing is pretty strong for road bikes. If I had to buy at cost my Emonda was £9k. But a lot of bikes in this range come with expensive wheels, my wheels if buying at retail were £2,200. groupset, integrated bars and stem etc all add up. A lot of bikes are also coming with power meters now as standard.

My mountain bikes have always been very average, Trek Remedy 9.8 and Trek Fuel Ex 8. But this is all I need really for the riding I do…..but then again I don’t really need an expensive road bike either…..

Could you water out and see if it grows into a 60cm frame?

Do what the pros do, size down.

@nickc, I know, tempted myself!

Having crashed my road bike in a race on Friday and snapped the handlebars & trashed my Dura ace Di2 shifters, I am rueing my decision to go with discs and internal routing. Very tempted to go back to rim brakes and cable shifting on my next bike, if I can find a suitable carbon frame that will take bigger tyres.

I’ve often wondered if the prices just tend to whatever the purchasing power of the main demographic is — so road bikes end up more expensive because the consumers are wealthier

Very much this, it's a bit like watches, the USP of a Rolex is it's price. In every other way, it's nothing special.

No shortage of £12-15k bikes in my road group, couple of 2023 Dogmas with full DA Di2 and Enve wheels, a few Tarmacs equally equipped...

I suppose the telling thing is that you can get a top-end eMTB for the same price as a top-end road bike.

And we know there's a hefty premium built into eeb prices to cover the failure rate.

couple of 2023 Dogmas

I know people buy them, but it still boggles my mind that someone could spend £10k on something that ugly. Ineos aren't even winning any more.

Now bikes are light and aero. In previous years you always had to make the choice, but now if you spend enough you get both.

So now you only "need" one road bike (plus the winter bike, the single speed, the timetrial bike etc)

Yet mountain bikes are diversifying into ever more specific categories encouraging you to get a [shudders] quiver.

So now you only “need” one road bike

Or one gravel bike with 2 sets of wheels 🙂

Yeah, you could get a Boardman with 105 for a grand a while back, but you also used to get $2 for £1 as well.

I would say lifetime costs are way cheaper. I'm still riding two handbuilt road bikes from 32 years ago - one Columbus SLX and Dura Ace, the other 653 and 600/Ultegra., so cost pretty low, other than chain rings, cassettes and wheels occasionally.

The FS MTB in the 6 year's I've had it has had two frame bearing changes, 2-3 cassettes and chains, 3 chainrings, and all the servicing it needs, bearing re-grease etc etc.

One thing that get's me is how components are back to being being weight weenies again. Comparing, say an old XT mech (on my old MTB) to a newer one, the new ones are much less robust, but weigh nothing, and, of course, can cope with more gears.

Prices seem to have gone silly, but looking on ebay, you can pick up someone's £6k plus road superbike, hardly used for £2k these days.

I know people buy them, but it still boggles my mind that someone could spend £10k on something that ugly. Ineos aren’t even winning any more.

I actually really like the shape of them, much more interesting than all the others, which all look identical.

They are really aero as well, when I free wheel next to one on a descent, they pull ahead really quickly.

@footflaps I tend to freewheel past folk on the downhills, not because the bike is aero, but because I have a higher body weight to surface area ratio.

I suspect the parts are 'better' 'value' - a post on Facebook asked why the more expensive stuff was more expensive...I said that it should last longer and be a bit lighter - the responses from the road riders suggested that the more expensive kit they use doesn't last as long. However, I've found the higher end kit does last longer in the MTB world. I've still got a 92/93 XT short cage rear mech that was still working until about 6 years ago when I took it off a bike...my drivetrain lasts me 3 years before needing to be replaced (admittedly it is chain, cassette and chainring, but I get 3 years flawless use out of it all, the cheaper kit (admittedly going back 6 years now) didn't last that long and had me replacing the parts on a yearly basis...

Suspect I'm about to be corrected and told I've just been lucky and the more expensive MTB kit doesn't last as long either!

They are really aero as well, when I free wheel next to one on a descent, they pull ahead really quickly.

The bike accounts for what, 10% of the total aero drag? I imagine anyone with a Pinarello has a similar open wallet approach to clothing and helmets.

edit - plus what IGM says.

A Boardman with 105 (and a naff chainset, but they've nearly always done that) is still 'only' £1200 - before hunting down any Halfords discounts etc.

https://www.boardmanbikes.com/gb_en/products/2341-slr-8.9-2021.html

I agree the middle and top of the market has gone mad, but the cost of entry for something more prosaic isn't much higher than it has been in the past.

What surprises me more is that Specialized & Trek flagship models are now just as expensive as custom options.

@DickBarton I think current 105 cranks have a reputation for outlasting the latest DuraAce and Ultegra. For a few extra grams the no crank arm snappage seems a good upgrade.

@DickBarton I think you're right up to a point. In general I think that as you go up in price point on components initially you're buying durability, then serviceability and lightness. At the very top end, lightness trumps everything and can start to impact durability.

Cheap stuff does the job for (sometimes very) occasional use. Mid range is the sweet spot for something that'll see regular use. High end is for ultimate performance where money is no object.

The bike accounts for what, 10% of the total aero drag?

The *entire* bike accounts for about 10-15%, the frame and fork about 20% of that. So the most aero frame on the market probably saves you ~30 watts at 50kph into perfectly still air.

Hardly "pull ahead really quickly" territory.

I’ve often wondered if the prices just tend to whatever the purchasing power of the main demographic is — so road bikes end up more expensive because the consumers are wealthier

It's always been this way, but it's getting worse. You used to be almost able to track the increased cost of the upgrade to the change in list price, plus a margin.

These day's it's completely disconnected. Same with lots of consumer toys.

A Boardman with 105 (and a naff chainset, but they’ve nearly always done that) is still ‘only’ £1200 – before hunting down any Halfords discounts etc.

Good point, and that looks comparable to the awesome Boardman Team Carbon I got for £1k about 12 years ago.

Most of us will want discs these days of course, so it's not apples to apples in that regard either.

People seem to forget the 'engine' is the rider !  No £15k superbike is going to make you faster than someone fitter on a £1,500 bike !  By all means get a nice bike, I've got some too, it's their money.  But splurging an arm and a leg on the latest part, to make the bike 500g less, won't improve your speed up a hill, that's down to you, and where the hard work starts. Shed a few kg of blubber and you'll fly.

And don;t forget to have a dump before the ride

😛

And don;t forget to have a dump before the ride

If you have a dump before the ride regardless of your bike, for any given poo weight, it will be a greater proportional improvement, the lighter your bike is.

People seem to forget the ‘engine’ is the rider !  No £15k superbike is going to make you faster than someone fitter on a £1,500 bike !  By all means get a nice bike, I’ve got some too, it’s their money.  But splurging an arm and a leg on the latest part, to make the bike 500g less, won’t improve your speed up a hill, that’s down to you, and where the hard work starts. Shed a few kg of blubber and you’ll fly.

While other people seem to forget that some people like riding light bikes.  I ride bikes for pleasure so anything that feels nicer to ride (based on my measure) is good and I particularly like light bikes and riding uphill.

I am a tight arse and my bike cost me under £1,000 to put together and weighs 6.6kg so you don't actually need to spend that much to get a fairly light bike.  I suppose I could lose weight myself but at 1.78m and 66KG I am fairly light already.

Compare like for like though?

E.g. a Vitus Escarpe CR and Vitesse CR are ~£1800-£2000 (depends on size available, discount etc but they're comparably priced)

The MTB gets deore kit, Marzocchi Z2 froks, etc.
The road bike gets 105, some carbon finishing kit.

It's not that dissimilar. A road bikes fork isn't free, there's still some R&D going into them, manufacturing cost etc. And a Marzocchi fork isn't that expensive and probably has much larger manufacturing scale. Try and buy an aftermarket carbon fork and a set of Z2's and the price is comparable (unless you find some old stock frame specific fork in an odd colour on clearance).

The days of 105 for £1k are
a) Long gone
b) It was generally only the shop brands that managed that. 20 years ago my CAAD was ~£900 and came with Tiagra. Same was true of most of the big brands, and

b has generally always been the case as road frames seem to have a lot more R&D, which is why Cannondale charged a lot more for a CAAD than Ribble did for the 7005 Audax.

I think road bike designers and Engineers maybe spend more time and effort to minimise the amount of bike you get.

In other words their effort goes into weight saving rather than supplying suspension technology and decent kinematics etc….

…but it’s very difficult to prove or demonstrate something like that :o)

+1

I'd suspect different R&D priorities, most MTB designs seem to be "make it 23% MOAR STIFFFF", throw a bit of layup at where last years model cracked, add some buzz words about the suspension kinematics hill you have elected to die on, and there you go. Go to the Fox/SRAM catalogue and pick some parts.

The bike accounts for what, 10% of the total aero drag? I imagine anyone with a Pinarello has a similar open wallet approach to clothing and helmets.

My old CAAD is now retro with it's big round tubes and boxy rims. It's noticeable that even the lightweights and ladies can pull ahead on descents now despite my gravitational advantage!

How much of a difference there is between Chinese air and expensive American wind tunnel air is perhaps debatable.

There was a time when Specialized’s lightest (adult) frame, across all disciplines, was the Epic HT. Not sure if it’s still the case though.

That's just simple mechanics, it's a physically much smaller frame, and for the most part bikes are defined by stiffness. For the most part if a frame is stiff enough it's already well past the point of being strong enough. So a 56cm road frame will generally weigh more than a 45cm MTB frame.

I think it's a good point about road parts lasting longer, you see a lot more old 'proper' road bikes about than you do MTBs. I had my Canyon road bike for 10 years and think I  only changed tyres and chain, my wears out faster due to mud and tends to get broken quite quickly. Suspension and disc brakes also need more attention than cable brakes and rigid forks.

And a Marzocchi fork isn’t that expensive and probably has much larger manufacturing scale.

Than a generic carbon road fork? I'd hazard they're produced about 1000:1 vs the marz.

Try and buy an aftermarket carbon fork and a set of Z2’s and the price is comparable

But that's the point, aftermarket road kit is expensive compared to mtb kit. See also road clothes vs the mtb equivalent.

But that’s the point, aftermarket road kit is expensive compared to mtb kit.

Not sure it really is for the things that you can directly compare - cranks, brakes, cassettes, mechs, stems, bars, frames etc,.   For example an Ultegra chainset is pretty much same price as XT chainset

Comparing a carbon road fork with an MTB suspension fork is not a true comparison is it.

The bike accounts for what, 10% of the total aero drag? I imagine anyone with a Pinarello has a similar open wallet approach to clothing and helmets.

My old CAAD is now retro with it’s big round tubes and boxy rims. It’s noticeable that even the lightweights and ladies can pull ahead on descents now despite my gravitational advantage!

I was coasting past some road cyclists on a (straight) road descent the other day with my 29 x 2.6" rubber, 120mm forks, Stooge riser bars, and internal gear hub

The difference is a dropper and low top tube that allows you to really tuck in

My feeling with road bikes is that the price point at which gains become very marginal is much, much lower than with an MTB

I mean, put a TDF rider on a basic shop-brand alloy bike with Tiagra, I bet they don't get much slower

But if you put a World Cup XC or DH rider on an entry-level MTB, I'd expect it to make a lot more difference

Well... May be my example isn't perfect

Perhaps instead, I'd argue that, beyond about £3000, there's a negligible performance difference in road bikes, but with MTB that's not the case

I am a tight arse and my bike cost me under £1,000 to put together and weighs 6.6kg so you don’t actually need to spend that much to get a fairly light bike.

Don't you ride singlespeed/fixed with no brakes?

Comparing a carbon road fork with an MTB suspension fork is not a true comparison is it.

Unless I'm missing the plot (quite plausible, it's sunny outside for what seems the first time in living memory) that's sort of the point of the thread though.

105 kitted road bike about the same price or more than a deore kitted mtb, which has suspension - potentially front and rear, possibly a dropper post etc.

Even then - deore shifter ~£40 rrp, disc brake, ~£120rrp = £160 ish

105 hydraulic brifter, £280rrp

What makes me laugh is that motor bikes are MUCH better value than mountain bikes. Right now you can buy a brand new 2023 Beta Evo 250cc trials bike (that you could go and ride 90% of UK trials on out of the box) for £5,500 inc. VAT.  Or a 2023 GasGas 2 stroke enduro bike for a shade over £7k inc. VAT.

And at the same time you could pay £15k for a road bicycle with 8 or 9 bearings, that barely ever need replacing or an electric assisted mountain bike?

Each to their own, we all decide how much of our own income we're prepared to spend on our hobbies and passions, but a £15k road bike isn't going to get 99% of us to our destination any faster, or in any more style than a £2k road bike.

My feeling with road bikes is that the price point at which gains become very marginal is much, much lower than with an MTB

I mostly agree.

Sadly a £3k MTB nowadays will only have mid-range suspension, so going to "Ultimate" level in RS or a top-end shock like an EXT could make a big difference in feel and control on the trail.

I'm less convinced of the benefits of going much beyond Deore/SLX on transmission and brakes. And £500-ish is all you need to spend on some nice alu wheels for MTB.

Whereas wheels are the one road upgrade that can actually buy you a significant performance boost, as I understand it - and carbon makes a lot more sense.

What makes me laugh is that motor bikes are MUCH better value than mountain bikes

Part of that is market size, which again, I'd suspect is orders of magnitude bigger for a road bike than a mtb.

The other thing is you're not comparing apples with apples. A 12k road bike is, pretty much, the same home being ridden by pros to professional success.
How many professional level enduro bikes that were ridden to of the podium of the x games or whatever the equivalent is can you buy for 12k?

Part of the reason bikes "are expensive" is that by and large people here have a massively out of whack idea of what a bike is. A mtb is about £200 from sports direct, it doesn't have xtr, or even acera kit on it. "Series" level finishing kit is the pointy end of mtb (and road) and very often people forget that when moaning about prices because actually it's pretty cheap compared with a lot of stuff for very very high end kit.

Sadly a £3k MTB nowadays will only have mid-range suspension,

And whilst I'm writing that, exactly my point, mid range suspension is rst or suntour kit. Rockshox, fox, marz et al don't make (least ways under their own name) mid range kit, it's all high end.

Things haven't become expensive, we've just lost perspective.

mid range suspension is rst or suntour kit. Rockshox, fox, marz et al don’t make (least ways under their own name) mid range kit, it’s all high end.

Sorry mate, that's just wrong.

Entry level suspension = Suntour, RST
Mid-range = RS lower tier stuff, Fox Rhythm
Top-end = RS Select+ & Ultimate, Fox Perf Elite & Factory, Ohlins etc.

I think it’s a good point about road parts lasting longer, you see a lot more old ‘proper’ road bikes about than you do MTBs. I had my Canyon road bike for 10 years and think I only changed tyres and chain, my wears out faster due to mud and tends to get broken quite quickly. Suspension and disc brakes also need more attention than cable brakes and rigid forks.

Mines on it's 2nd full rebuild and 7th drivechain refresh 😬

Just need to swap the frame for the full triggers broom.

I think there's a bit of an inclination to buy nice road kit as it does last longer without crashes mud wearing it out. There's no way I'd buy XTR/XX1 but Dura ace, at least second hand doesn't seem half as bad as it'll last a decade or more.

chakaping

Sorry mate, that’s just wrong.

Entry level suspension = Suntour

Just five grand for this Olympic ewinning entry level Suntour setup

https://www.pinkbike.com/news/sr-suntour-launches-tom-pidcocks-olympic-winning-electronic-suspension-for-4999-eurobike-2023.html

Just five grand for this Olympic ewinning entry level Suntour setup

You know full well which products I mean

😛

Road bikes are an absolute rip off. I’m lucky enough to have an sworks sl7 with etap and I can comfortably say it’s absolutely no faster than the canyon I bought in 2015 costing a quarter of the price. And it’s heavier as well as it has disks.

The bottom of the range sl8 is 6k ffs. About 5 years ago it was half that price.

The other thing I find odd is that when you buy a top end road bike you seem to pay more than you would if you bought the frame and exactly the same components at RRP. Specialized for example seem to charge about a grand more than the sum of the parts simply to stick the thing together

You know full well which products I mean

Epicons maybe? There's a whole world of stuff under those.

Mid level kit is the sort of stuff a non cyclist would generally get on a (sensibly priced) bike they thought was expensive, it's not stuff which costs what a non cyclist would expect to get a whole bike for.

See deore as an example, it's the third teir of shimano kit yet we tend to think of it as work horse, how many levels of shimano mtb kit are there below deore?
How many drive trains are there from others before shimano even [still] produce a competitor product?

What's the mtb equivalent of claris? On a road bike there's still stuff under that you're actually likely to find on a bike in a bike shop (eg a shop for cyclists) not just decathlon and the like.

Don’t you ride singlespeed/fixed with no brakes?

Not for almost a year now.  On a road bike now as into going faster at the moment.

The bottom of the range sl8 is 6k ffs. About 5 years ago it was half that price.

Yep, a quick check and in 2019 the SL6 comp (with Ultegra) was £2,900.  Something has gone wrong somewhere...

The other thing I find odd is that when you buy a top end road bike you seem to pay more than you would if you bought the frame and exactly the same components at RRP. Specialized for example seem to charge about a grand more than the sum of the parts simply to stick the thing together

Even Specialized must hate dealing with integrated cables.

@dangeourbrain has covered it up there but

What makes me laugh is that motor bikes are MUCH better value than mountain bikes. Right now you can buy a brand new 2023 Beta Evo 250cc trials bike (that you could go and ride 90% of UK trials on out of the box) for £5,500 inc. VAT.

I also dont think this is quite the case. It does seem initially that way, and its mad you can buy a fully road legal powered motorcycle for three grand, but the counter to your argument is that you could quite easily ride 90% (100% really!?) of UK MTB trails on a £399 'out the box' Carrera

Perhaps instead, I’d argue that, beyond about £3000, there’s a negligible performance difference in road bikes, but with MTB that’s not the case

The marketing tells you that, but I'm not convinced.

I like a twiddled dial as much as the next person, and nice suspension does feel nicer. But I'm not convinced it's proportionally faster in real world.

The sharp end of the WCDH/EWS might eek out a second over 5 minutes on their factory spec 40's that have been tinkered by experts. They might make a few seconds on the 40's Vs the Marzocchi version or lower tier Boxxers.

But to average Joe, are we either good enough to exploit that difference, or do we even care?

Remember years ago Dirt tried to be more scientific in their testing and started a sort of Top-Gear power laps style system and gave up after a few months when every bike they tested was within about 5 seconds of their WC spec Intense. Two in particular, Spesh Enduro (the one with the low mounted shock) which they couldn't praise enough and dripping in the best Fox could supply at the time, the other a Giant Faith they slated and IIRC had base spec Manitou. One was 4 seconds off, the other 6 seconds.

The margin between a £1500 bike and a £15,000 bike are very slim IMO even off-road unless one has a motor).

Part of the price increases is just the crappy pound though, no?

In the USA, a bike that cost $5000 ten years ago, adjusted for inflation, would now cost about $6500. About 31% increase.

But throw in the decline of the pound, and that Trek or Specialized has gone from £3,000, to £5,250. A 73% rise, but only for Brits. If the pound was still at 2013 levels, it would be more like £4k...

The bolloxology cycle turns more slowly for road, so it’s a less frequent purchase.

It's felt pretty fast recently!

It’s felt pretty fast recently!

Do you mean genuinely or for a sport which gets remarkably upset when you deviate a bit far from the turn of the last century.

You'll want pneumatic tyres soon.

the cost of high-end things for any sport is based purely on the disposable income of those who take part.

BMX? everyones a poor teenager, a fully bling bike is under a grand
Road? Fully of middle-age-middle-managers with large wodges of disposable. Lets charge £15k
Golf? Hifi speaker cable? all super expensive. Nintendo switch? Super cheap.

BMX? everyones a poor teenager, a fully bling bike is under a grand

I was rather surprised how much you could spend on an entry level bmx by the recommendations on that other thread

the cost of high-end things for any sport is based purely on the disposable income of those who take part.

Absolutely this...    the manufacturers and marketers will milk us for as much as they can. No idea what their actual margins are but I would guess pretty high.

I stand by my point about trials and enduro motorbikes, there really isn't anything you can do to trials bikes other than change springs and add some blingy titanium bits for looks. You could genuinely buy a £6k 300cc trials bike today, fettle suspension for maybe £200 and ride the Scottish Six Days trial on it next April (skill permitting). Enduro bikes, sure, you'd want mousses and suspension tuning, but for sub £10k you could have a very competitive bike at national level.

and ride the Scottish Six Days trial on it next April (skill permitting)

Sure, but skill permitting, I could ride val di sole DH on a £150 BSO.
Where as for "10k" I could ride it on "the same" bike that the world cup winner rode it on a week earlier.

Heck I could drive round monza or Silverstone perfectly adequately in a £500 bangernomics bargain, skill permitting I could possibly put in respectable time too. Otoh I couldn't buy an F1 car even if I had the cash.

What would it cost to buy this year's podium topping enduro/trials bike?

Enduro bikes, sure, you’d want mousses and suspension tuning, but for sub £10k you could have a very competitive bike at national level.

For a few k you could buy a road bike or mountain bike that would be competitive at national level (for 10 you could buy a road bike you actually can't ride in stock because it's too light).

You don't have to spend 10 to 20k to buy a competition level push bike, sure if you're chasing 10ths or 100ths that 30k track bike is possibly going to find them for you but it's proper halo level stuff at that point.

It’s felt pretty fast recently!

Not really, Di2 has taken 20 years to become mainstream (or 30 if you include Mavic Zap/Browning and all the other evolutionary dead ends) discs have taken 10+ to be accepted, maybe more, or ~40 if you include the early shimano discs. Tubeless has been around 20 odd years offroad, and i was experimenting with it on CX in the early 00s, and i wasn't the only one. Think the "official" launch was 05 or 06.

Same with carbon, bigger tyres being faster unless the surface is smooth as glass, integrated bar/stem, concealed cables. They've all been around or about in one form or another for a couple of decades, or more.

They've just got really expensive recently.

discs have taken 10+ to be accepted, maybe more

Are they accepted? I thought they were still more devisive for roadies than ebikes are for [s] grumpy curmudgeonly old men with nothing better to do than get upset about than other people having fun [/s] mtbers.

I totally agree with what core is saying.

There will be very little difference to the bikes Bou, Raga, Busto are riding and winning World Trials on to a bike you can walk into a shop and buy for a lot less than a top end road bike.

I raced British and World Enduros on a bike that was pretty much stock. Again cheaper than a lot of eebers.
If I wanted to get back in to it I could buy a new Enduro bike throw a Rekluse clutch in it and a couple of mousses and it'd still be me that was the limiting factor not the bike. All of that would still be a hell of a lot cheaper than an S Works eeber.

My mates that still do Trials and Enduros think it hilarious how much people are paying for pushbikes.

The expense in Enduro is keeping the things running...

I think that for a lot of people who buy high end bikes, they're a status symbol.

I could buy a new Enduro bike throw a Rekluse clutch in it and a couple of mousses and it’d still be me that was the limiting factor not the bike.

To be honest, I could spend £50 on a BSO from Facebook and try racing it and I'd still be the limiting factor 😂

Are they accepted?

They're mainstream. 90% of pro racers across the board are on them.

I mean, i like my rim braked bikes, but discs are now here and not going anywhere. My latest road bike is Di2, Disc and clearance for 33mm tyres...

clearance for 33mm tyres…

Ahhh, a gravel bike then 😉