What a shame

[Balloonoob]

After wondering if the American flag logo on the huffy bike i owned as a kid in the early 90s was just slapped on a Chinese made bike i read the Wikipedia article on huffy. Turns out these were the last of the American made huffy bikes. It's a pity that corporations like Wal-Mart get to set the price point and therefore the quality of products for American consumers. Personally i couldn't afford 1200 dollars for a high end mountain or road bike from a lbs but why does a Walmart mongoose pos need to be my only other option if buying from a major retail store. If you look at what was made in the 30s or 40s or 50s and sold through sears or Montgomery Wards stores the price point seemed closer to 3 or 4 or 5 hundred dollars (based on inflation calculations) which is and was a lot but at least they lasted. That to me is about what a bike should cost. At least adult bikes. I mean so many of us own these machines 70 or 80 or 90 years later. This likely will not be the case for many of today's Walmart bikes. I guess I can understand kids bikes and toys being cheap and crappy. My kid would rather get 10 cheap toys than one nice one and princess decals or cheap plastic doll carriers take priority over paint schemes or design elements on her bike. I'm beginning to understand why some people choose not to shop at major retailers at all.

 

[49autocycledeluxe]

if you want a high end mountain bike buy a used one. used bikes are cheap. I recently bought a $3,000.00 road bike for $300.00. price guides showed it values d at only $450 max. i'm sure mountain bikes are the same way.

 

[Andrew Gorman]

Walmart has driven MANY US manufacturers out of business. Shop there if you want to, but I don't.

 

[farkasthegoalie]

This is what I always tell people- if I have a bike for sale, listed for $xxx, they say "It's an old bike- I can go to Walmart and get a brand new one for $xx!" Go ahead- that wallyworld bike won't last but more than a few years. I'm pretty sure you won't be looking at the Cabe 25 years from now and someone is wanting some info on how to restore a 2012 Wallgoose 10 speed...

 

[phantom]

This is what I always tell people- if I have a bike for sale, listed for $xxx, they say "It's an old bike- I can go to Walmart and get a brand new one for $xx!" Go ahead- that wallyworld bike won't last but more than a few years. I'm pretty sure you won't be looking at the Cabe 25 years from now and someone is wanting some info on how to restore a 2012 Wallgoose 10 speed...

If people are actually telling you that then they have no idea what it is to start with and you probably not pre screening them well enough. I have sold a lot of classic Mustangs on CL and not one single person has ever said to me " it's old , I can go to the Ford dealer and get a new one for that amount.

 

[Sevenhills1952]

I was an Consumer electronics technician 43 years, retired over 5 years ago. I was in then retired at the perfect time. Most people today don't know or care about quality. They want bang for the buck.
It is sad but true with most everything.
A 5000 sq. ft. stick house is more appealing than a better built 2500 one. Most people I believe prefer bells and whistles over well-built.
Remember years ago when new car lots had all the hoods open? Now you see a plastic motor cover... but it has GPS, camera, heated/cooled seats.

Sent from my SM-S320VL using Tapatalk

 

[bikewhorder]

Well if its any consolation those US made Huffy's were also total crap.

 

[Balloonoob]

Well if its any consolation those US made Huffy's were also total crap.

Ok i will give you that. My huffy had bars like these and after several jumps they bent downward and were busted. Pretty sure i soon after got a schwinn.

 

[5782341b77vl]

I've seen videos on YouTube of Walmart bikes vs bike shop bikes. These bikes (BMX bikes to be exact) were both put thru abusive testing and (surprise, surprise) the Walmart bike was the first one to start breaking! Needless to say, the testing continued, until the Walmart bike became 100% unrideable, and they threw it over into a dumpster or car crusher (where it belongs)!

While bike shop bikes are a bit more, they are better quality (FAR BETTER), than what you will find at Walmart! Proof that you get what you pay for!

 

[Duchess]

There are decent quality bikes in the mid hundreds range, though they are made in China, but so are some bikes up to $5k. You won't get a quality new mountain bike at that price, but comparing some ancient simple bike made of cold rolled steel pipes to something using modern materials with suspension systems, gears, and effective braking doesn't make sense—that's like comparing a Chevy Nova to a Raptor. Furniture and tools are much better comparisons as there's either cheap junk or high end or mid range that's just the cheap junk with a higher price tag. Mountain biking, like road biking has a lot of shallow people chasing the latest fad and bragging about how expensive their bike is, so something that's a few years old is "antiquated" and uncool (or an overpriced, disposable POS made of plastic carbon fiber), which makes for good used deals for sensible people who just want to enjoy riding a nice bike.

Definitely concur with the remarks about houses. I'd prefer a reasonable-sized house that's well built, extremely low maintenance, high resistance to natural disasters, and is very highly efficient, but small houses are poorly built and old (cost to build between large and small is so close and the profit potential so great, that it makes little sense for a developer to build small and the people who own the old ones don't bother updating them) and everyone insists on building antiquated crap out of woodshavings and chewing gum to conform to old, boring appearances like every other house. What I'd like to build is a monolithic concrete dome with the flat sides like a drum in about the 1200 sq.ft range, but good luck getting a loan without any comparables, "small" size, and unfamiliarity to the lender and land is too expensive anywhere I want to live to self-fund construction.