Are Trek Made In USA

Are Trek bikes made in USA ?

"Paulie" wrote in message
...
Are Trek bikes made in USA ?

I think the lower-end bikes are made in China/Taiwan. The
more expensive models are US-built.

hippy

hippy Wrote:
"Paulie" wrote in message
...
Are Trek bikes made in USA ?

I think the lower-end bikes are made in China/Taiwan. The
more expensive models are US-built.

hippy

I was told the same thing by my LBS.


--
jazmo

Paulie Wrote:
Are Trek bikes made in USA ?

I think some are. I have a Trek 700 multitrack that was made in China.


--
kbs23

"Paulie" wrote in message
...
Are Trek bikes made in USA ?

Their aluminium frames are made in Taiwan/China, carbon frames in USA.

The mystique is 'Made in USA' for all their bikes

Steve @ IDEAL

"Tony" wrote in message
...

"Paulie" wrote in message
...
Are Trek bikes made in USA ?

Their aluminium frames are made in Taiwan/China, carbon frames in USA.

I've got a Trek 8500 hardtail mountain bike and that was made in the
U.S.

but I know people that have 'cheaper' trek 4500 MTB trek and this is
NOT made in the U.S.

I think trek have done a pretty good PR job as everybody thinks they
are buying a US made bike


--
bag_head

bag_head Wrote:
I've got a Trek 8500 hardtail mountain bike and that was made in the
U.S.

but I know people that have 'cheaper' trek 4500 MTB trek and this is
NOT made in the U.S.

I think trek have done a pretty good PR job as everybody thinks they
are buying a US made bike

Hang on, aren't we being just a tiny bit racist here? Surely what we
are reacting against is sloppy quality control, not the different
racial/national characteristics/locations of the workers who actually
lay their hands on the materials, and who the factories get their
rubbish collected by? A lot of the workers in American hazardous
materials work come from Mexico/Chile/Costa Rica et c. because the
health effects of fumes from welding exotic metals, bonding epoxy
resins and the like make the more economically able (read white, middle
class, networked) US citizen choose more congenial lines of employment.
Only the engineering/management staff need to be especially highly
skilled to get a fairly consistent outcome of product. They can be of
any nationality.

Sure, the US and Europe used to have a monopoly on high tech materials
science, due mainly to the big budgets pumped into their military by
public and private funding, swords got beaten into ploughshares, and
now the same science that used to make a landing gear strut for a
supersonic jet fighter makes the seat tube for your bike. Most of the
workers at Lightspeed and Moots and Merlin learnt how to TIG weld at
various US military contractors, they at the time being the only people
who could to afford to process titanium for the USAF and NASA. Skills
were transferred via the insatiable search for ever cheaper labour, and
now China/Taiwan has upskilled from the point of brass welding heavy
guage waterpipe to flawlessly TIGging alloy and titanium, and laying up
epoxy/carbon mixtures to the point that Bianchi (gasp!) gets many of
their composite forks and rear ends made up there. All you need is a
Autocad file and a spec sheet, a colour chart and a delivery date, and
you can get what you want from any one of a hundred companies.
How is Trek different from Nike, in this respect? Does the fact that
these highly skilled technicians live in Asia justify them being paid
1/10 or less the money that their fellow fitters and
turners/welders/fabricators/assemblers get paid in Italy or the USA?
And why is an Italian or US component inherently superior to a
Taiwanese-sourced one? Could it be that Taiwan is the centre of the
world's bike industry now, and we arrogant westies just assume that
we've got the drop on it because of our neo-colonial globalisation
free-trade World Bank IMF whosimajiggy?

Tom Ritchey's products are a case in point. He designs his products
intelligently, gets them made offshore in a well-run manufacturing
facility where the workers are paid over the odds and treated well, and
best-practice quality control is in place with evolutionary,
shop-floor/testing driven product improvement. I know I sound like an
ad for Ritchey, but if all manufacturers operated like this, we'd have
less black magic bull**** being spun about what we ride, and more
honest and informed choice uncluttered by sacred lineages of arrogant
cycling dynasties. I used to adore Cinelli, like any other kid growing
up riding bikes in the 70s/80s, but two things turn me off them now.
Once, I bought an XA stem, and the sharp edge of the clamp slot, gave
me a really deep cut on my thumb. I can see the scar as I type. The XA
at the time had been demoted as their pro level stem to wannabe level
(me), so I suppose it didn't merit as much attention. If they'd
bothered to take 5 seconds more trouble at the end of the polishing
process to round that off, I'd not be bagging them now. Well, that and
the fact their "cork" (read 'polyurethane with cork flecks') tape has
torn more often on installation than any other that I've used. They are
really stingy with how much they give you as well, so if you are taping
44cm bars, you'd better be really careful, with minimal overlap.

I don't want to pour a can of crap over Cinelli in particular, but
these examples and more I've heard/seen indicate that unless you want
to spend big bucks on many European/US brands, you get whatever they
choose to give you, and they assume that you should trust them to know
what's best for you. A two-tier system. But because they have been
sourcing their cheaper parts from China/Taiwan, does that mean their
low-end stuff is now better? Hmm . . .

Go third party with a clear acknowledgement of who they are and what
they do, is my position. Why is Giant so successful? Coz they say what
they are. Tom Ritchey makes no bones that he gets his stuff made in
Taiwan. Unlike GT, cynically using the bones of Syncros to add some
marketing gloss to whatever they gan buy cheap for OEM, with no
independent attestation of whether it is any good or not. Syncros =good
(then) so Syncros (whatever we choose to call Syncros now)=good (now).
So effectively, Syncros=nothing

M"no place for marketing bull**** on bikes, it's too heavy"H

p.s. sorry about running on a bit . . . I get all heated up about QC
issues . . .


--
mfhor

mfhor wrote -

Hang on, aren't we being just a tiny bit racist here? Surely what we
are reacting against is sloppy quality control, not the different
racial/national characteristics/locations of the workers who actually
lay their hands on the materials, snip

I can well remember in the early 60's that Japanese goods (cars, cameras)
were slandered as being vastly inferior to their English or US
competitors - and we were told they were cheaper than European or US
products because of "cheap (read shoddy) labour".

Can't see too many English car manufacturers left whilst Toyota looks like
displacing GM as the worlds biggest car maker - snobbishness about country
of origin has no place in the evaluation of a product.

The really interesting thing is what mainland China is going to do the
worlds manufacturers. You don't necessarily need the biggest military to
dominate the globe anymore - as Western consumer societies running
consistently negative trade balances have made ourselves incredibly
vulnerable to having our trade deficits financed by Asian countries. Watch
that trend continue.

I do like my Trek - and I'm not fussed where they made it.

best, Andrew

"Andrew Price" wrote in message


[...]

I can well remember in the early 60's that Japanese goods (cars,
cameras) were slandered as being vastly inferior to their English or
US competitors - and we were told they were cheaper than European or
US products because of "cheap (read shoddy) labour".

It was no slander. Jap then really was crap. They improved their quality
control over time but pretending their manufactured products were not
inferior in the 60s is to rewrite history.

--

A: Top-posters.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet?