Leading makers of 'production' carbon fiber road frames

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mpulsiv
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by mpulsiv

Cervelo is notorious for hairline cracks around BB. I used to spend hours on their forum http://forums.cervelo.com/forums/5.aspx and I must say that Cervelo riders are somewhat stubborn, "I love Cervelo, its the best bike in the world!"

Yes, they make great bikes or should I say used to?
Racing is a three-dimensional high-speed chess game, involving hundreds of pieces on the board.

:arrow: CBA = Chronic Bike Addiction
:arrow: OCD = Obsessive Cycling Disorder

wingguy
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by wingguy

fromtrektocolnago wrote:But I do to struggle with how a Cervelo is better than Felt, though owned by the same company


You're thinking of Focus, not Felt.

And to Mpulsive, since their acquisition Cervelo's (admittedly previously quite poor) quality control and finish quality has only gone up. So why would you say they used to make good bikes? I don't understand that at all.

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goodboyr
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by goodboyr

BRM wrote:
goodboyr wrote:Right.......not like pinarello.....


What are you trying to do? By naming others it suddenly is not such an issue?
Oh you have a Cervelo, what a coincidence. lol :twisted:
I never said other manufacturers are not guilty on marketing BS.
But Cervelo is the worst of all. By far.

Maybe we should start a new topic.
A topic where we make a list of the marketing BS related to specific manufacturers.

:wink:

And you ride a .........?

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BRM
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by BRM

goodboyr wrote:And you ride a .........?


Something is wrong with your approach.

It doesn't matter what I ride because:
A] I don't promote the brand (with text or thoughts triggered by their marketing)
B] The reason why I bought my current brand bike has nothing to do with their marketing.
C] It will not change that Cervelo is king of marketing lies.

goodboyr
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by goodboyr

Just trying to understand where you are coming from. But never mind. We know where you stand........we just don't know why! :-)

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mpulsiv
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by mpulsiv

Let's not bash on brands. They all hold a candle to marketing lies. Every year we are brainwashed with the quote: "Lighter, stiffer, aero".
Racing is a three-dimensional high-speed chess game, involving hundreds of pieces on the board.

:arrow: CBA = Chronic Bike Addiction
:arrow: OCD = Obsessive Cycling Disorder

justkeepedaling
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by justkeepedaling

BRM wrote:
goodboyr wrote:And you ride a .........?


Something is wrong with your approach.

It doesn't matter what I ride because:
A] I don't promote the brand (with text or thoughts triggered by their marketing)
B] The reason why I bought my current brand bike has nothing to do with their marketing.
C] It will not change that Cervelo is king of marketing lies.


There is something wrong with your approach, you haven't stated your justification yet.

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phatphuk
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by phatphuk

This shouldn't be much of a news flash. But there are some very slick brain games played on all y'all by ALL bike companies' marketing people. And the name of the game is...

Expert Fallacy

Image

National Geographic Channel wrote:...Your default setting is trust...You go along with the person in authority...You go along with what everyone else is doing...Because that is the way evolution has conditioned us for generations...Going along with the tribe often upped your odds of survival...[continued]


Priming

Image
National Geographic Channel wrote:...Priming is a phenomenon that works as a simple persuasion technique. Primes are subtle cues that influence peoples' subconscious attitudes and responses. As a result, primes influence decision-making. By directly influencing peoples' subconscious thoughts, priming influences peoples' decisions without their even realizing...[continued]

Those are just a couple. There are others. But you get the idea. What's slick about it is nobody is immune to it . Regardless of what you try to tell yourself.

justkeepedaling
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by justkeepedaling

^ There's a real problem with that argument. Independent testing (from numerous sources) has time and time again shown that their stated claims are actually valid.

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mpulsiv
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by mpulsiv

There are no standards when it comes to independent tests. Nevertheless numbers don't lie but humans do. Whether it's a marketing lie or rider's psychological state. Humans are terrible at producing consistency in repetitive fashion. I find bike reviews invaluable! In summary, they are all stiff, compliant and agile. I will believe it if a robot will take a bike for spin and ride it like it was programmed to do.
Racing is a three-dimensional high-speed chess game, involving hundreds of pieces on the board.

:arrow: CBA = Chronic Bike Addiction
:arrow: OCD = Obsessive Cycling Disorder

goodboyr
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Location: Canada

by goodboyr

phatphuk wrote:This shouldn't be much of a news flash. But there are some very slick brain games played on all y'all by ALL bike companies' marketing people. And the name of the game is...

Expert Fallacy

Image

National Geographic Channel wrote:...Your default setting is trust...You go along with the person in authority...You go along with what everyone else is doing...Because that is the way evolution has conditioned us for generations...Going along with the tribe often upped your odds of survival...[continued]


Priming

Image
National Geographic Channel wrote:...Priming is a phenomenon that works as a simple persuasion technique. Primes are subtle cues that influence peoples' subconscious attitudes and responses. As a result, primes influence decision-making. By directly influencing peoples' subconscious thoughts, priming influences peoples' decisions without their even realizing...[continued]


Those are just a couple. There are others. But you get the idea. What's slick about it is nobody is immune to it . Regardless of what you try to tell yourself.


Ok. So in essence, these bike companies can't be trusted, they are operating sophisticated marketing schemes and all the technical stuff they publish and is the basis for most of the discussions on these forums and others is BS,......so, one question for you..........why do you trust the National Geographic Channel?.........aren't they putting on that show to get advertising and sponsors, so therefore its in their interests to propose the most interesting, outrageous stuff to get our attention? Why do you trust them?

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phatphuk
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by phatphuk

I said nothing of the sort. Whatever observations anybody makes or whatever conclusions anybody draws from reading or watching exactly what I shared, is out of my control. I fully expected that some would misconstrue or fail to comprehend what I shared. And it doesn't surprise me that some will get inappropriately defensive about what I shared. But that's not my problem either.

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Fourthbook
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by Fourthbook

The debate about who one can believe is in essence at the core of the original post: can you industry 'insiders', whether experienced racers, shop owners, frame builders, or serious amateur aficionados, help those of us with much more limited access to broad firsthand knowledge distinguish the true leading brands from the marketing hype and limited, inconsistent testing, whether qualitative (opinion based) or quantitative? Again, the issue isn't where the frame is made (Asia or Europe or North America) or by whom (the name on the frame versus an unidentified company) or finished and distributed, but rather what brands are the true innovators, the real leaders among the several dozen Pro Tour brands and others who don't supply UCI teams in terms of quality design, craftsmanship, style/finish and consumer support? Perhaps I'm naive but I assume there is a range of quality among those 'name brands'.

What are those top brands? Responses have said Cervelo, Look, Giant while others disagree. Can you give reasons/evidence in support of your perceptions?

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BeeSeeBee
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by BeeSeeBee

If we're prizing the engineering of the frames and ignoring production issues, aesthetics, subjective stuff, etc...

Cervelo - They're consistently among the best when it comes to weight (California project), aero road (S Series), and TT/Tri stuff (P Series).

Trek - While they used to be fairly boring, I think the stuff coming out of Trek these days is phenomenal. Weight (Emonda), Aero/light (Madone), TT/Tri (Speed Concept), Cross/Comfort (Decoupled seat tubes (Domane/Boone))

Third, I don't really know... Felt with the IA, AR, and F series? BMC with the SLR, TMR, and TM Series? Scott with the Addict, Foil, and Plasma Series? There's a bunch, but Cervelo/Trek seem to me like the ones with the most engineering prowess.

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phatphuk
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by phatphuk

Any freshman psychology student worth their salt should be able to spot the undeniable effectiveness of these and other powerful marketing tools playing out in real time right here in most of the discussions on these forums and others...

The Decoy Effect
Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D. ◘ Pyschology Today wrote:"...The theory behind the decoy effect (Choplin & Hummel, 2002) proposes that when we make decisions, we are heavily swayed by the way in which a choice is presented. They call this attribute-value evaluation. The $60 wallet makes the $50 item seem less expensive, and therefore people choose it. The $20 wallet makes quality more important, so people are willing to spend $30 to get a better product.
...
If you want to be a wise consumer, the decoy effect suggests that you should be wary about marketers manipulating you to spend more than you want to...Make your choices based on what you know you want, and can afford, and not about the artificial distinctions they put in front of you..."

[continued]


Choice Blindness
Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D. ◘ Pyschology Today wrote:"...In early research on choice blindness (Johansson et al., 2005), researchers asked participants to rate pairs of female faces on which was more attractive. Then they asked participants to say why their choice looked more attractive to them (say A vs B). Like the menu swap, on certain trials, the researchers told the participants that they had chosen the opposite (B, not A). On only about one-quarter of the trials did participants notice that they were now defending as more attractive the face they had originally rated as less attractive.
...
Like the decoy effect, marketers can put change blindness to work for them...anyone trying to sell their wares can also easily lure you to plunk down money for a choice you originally felt was undesirable..."

[continued]

To anybody who gets bent out of shape over what I've shared above: I'm not sharing this to incite an argument. Nor am I suggesting that marketing is evil. I'm simply sharing something that I happen to know; because it is what it is. If some understand it, that's great. If some get riled over it, that's on them.

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