How old can a 'new' bike be.....

Anonymous

Just looking for thoughts on this one.

When you bought your nice shiny new bike, did you consider that although new it might have been hanging around for a while?

Here's my reason for asking: - In May I went along to my LBS and selected a new bike from the Manufacturer's 2008 catalogue. The dealer ordered my bike from the UK HQ of the manufacturer and called a couple of days later to tell me it was ready for collection.

On getting the bike home, I noticed two things that made me wonder.

Firstly, the bike had the old style company badge on the front ( the 2008 catalogue showed the new style badge )

Secondly, there was a build label on the down tube that told me my '2008' (May) bike had been built in December 2006!!

On enquiring from the UK HQ I was informed that the model I had bought was a low volume seller and that all the production run was done at once.

Am I being overly picky? The bike was an identical spec.

AW

Denny69

If it's identical spec to the one in the catalogue, apart from the badge, I wouldn't be overly bothered. Afterall it's got the same parts just an older badge.

Mystique

What bike is it??

alan_sherman

As with anything - mass production means runs of things are done to build up stock. Check the inside of your helmet - most have a 'manufactured on' date.

Cars wit at Southampton doclks for ages before going to the dealerships around the country.

OffTheBackAdam

Yep, you're being picky.
Same spec, same price, unridden.
It's a "new" bike in my book.

nwallace

alan sherman wrote:

Cars wit at Southampton doclks for ages before going to the dealerships around the country.

That's after they have been given a VIN, which can be used to determine the date of manufacture. Some companies have been known to build too many shells, leave them in a field in Finland for a couple of years then give them their VIN numbers once they were completed, then hung about a bit at Southampton docks before going to a dealer where they hung about a bit before being registered. This has worked in some peoples favour as the old 25 year rule on VED worked on date of manufacture (done by VIN record dating) rather than first registered date meaning a number of cars first registered well after the 1 Jan 1973 cut off eligible for Historic Vehicle exemption.

I would presume the retrospective tax increase for 2001 onwards cars will apply to first registered dates rather than manufacture dates.