Cost of Pro Bike

mr_goo

In the 'Official' TdF guide there is a small article on bikes. It states that the average cost of a Pro's bike is £6k!! Is this right? For top end bikes I would have thought cost would be edging over 5 figures.

gllewellyn

Primera Sports in Bournemouth regularly have pro-spec bikes in the window - the last one I saw a couple of weeks ago was an Eddy Merckx which I think was about £12k.

Gazzaputt

Why 5 figures?

Omega Pharma - Lotto's Canyon can be had for £4k

http://www.canyon.com/_uk/roadbikes/bike.html?b=2120

Rule74Please

All pro bikes are prototypes. Not the model off the shelf as you are often told.

average price is in the region of £25K for the tour

liamg

Don't forget that a lot of pros use an SRM which will add ~£3k to any bike. The guide probably hasn't taken that into account

Rule74Please

All pro bikes are prototypes. Not the model off the shelf as you are often told.

average price is in the region of £25K for the tour

rick_chasey

They're not enormously dissimilar to the top end bikes you can buy.

The main difference to the frame (if there even is one, which I often doubt) is that they might be beefed up a bit and made a little stiffer (especially if you're a high profile sprinter)

The wheels are likely to be phenomenally expensive, (though, again, you can still buy these in a turbo bike shop).

The pros tend to be workhorses for new shifting and braking systems, but even then, the majority will just be rocking the highest end gearsets you can buy.

Finally, the pros are likely to be riding tyres which are a little harder to get hold of, and they can be as much as £100 (for each tub or both, I can't remember).

Someone with a bit of money can buy them though.

Whoever is claiming £25,000, where did you get that figure from?

From what I've read and inferred, pro riders don't tend to give much of a sh!t about their bike, as long as it works and doesn't put them at noticeable disadvantage. Any chat otherwise is for the sponsors, and it's not surprising teams like the Cervelo team are much more vocal about how 'amazing' their bikes are than other teams who don't have a bike manufacturer as their title sponsor.

CyclingBantam

Rule74Please wrote:

All pro bikes are prototypes. Not the model off the shelf as you are often told.

average price is in the region of £25K for the tour

Who the hell told you that?!

I might be wrong but I think that is absolute nonsense!

StageWinner

Bikes running Di2 (and now Campag's electronic shifting system) with carbon wheels and an SRM will top the £10K figure. But for some teams their bikes will certainly come in under this figure.

Plus they don't actually pay for them so the cost is somewhat irrelevant.

Rule74Please

Frames is the place of cost.

Spesh made 6 specials for boonenat a reported total cost of £125K a few years ago.

frame making is outsourced to a few companies and you buy a production model. a bit like a superbike Ducatti and the one in the shop.

look the same but that is all

rick_chasey

Rule74Please wrote:

Frames is the place of cost.

Spesh made 6 specials for boonenat a reported total cost of £125K a few years ago.

That was an exceptional case. Boonen was the biggest rider Spesh had on their bikes, and he has a particularly sensitive back and is unusually tall, so they had to make him a custom made one (which will always be more expensive)

The rest of the team were on stock off-the-peg frames.

58585

I guess it depends what you mean by "cost" - pro tour teams are not putting in bulk orders from wiggle
In fact teams/riders are paid to ride certain equipment, so there is no cost.
If you go and order the parts at rrp then you could come up with any figure from probably 4k to close to 20k for pro-tour bikes. How much does it cost the manufacturers to actually produce a full bike (accepting that they are not selling them to make a profit)? A whole let less than 6k for a "standard" domestiques machine I'd say.

Pirahna

Not sure where the prototype thing came from. As nearly all frames are made in a mould the pro's get exactly the same as everybody else, paint is the only difference. There may be occasions where somebody gets next years model, but that's the exception rather than the rule.

Component wise, you do see riders using prototype stuff occasionally but 99.9% of the time it's off the shelf stuff.

andyrr

Don't think the majority of bikes are significantly different to those that any punter can assemble given the cash.
Std Frame for most - Tarmac SL2 for example, Canyon - std frame, companies such as this, where the frames are manufactured by huge companies that do not want to tool up for some tiny run with an altered carbon layup etc.
Wheels - often std although expensive, hoops such as Mavic Carbonne (all carbon model - maybe £2500 the set ?
If Mavic, for example, are the wheel supplier then it is bad form for the team's top rider to be seen on a set of non-Mavic wheels.
Std tubs for normal GT stages (ie not the cobbled classics) - Conti Competition, Vittoria Corsa CX, etc, alloy bar/stem in most cases (so no mega fancy carbon cockpit), std model saddle (personalised often), std drivetrain for most (Campag Record / Sram Red / Shimano DA (or Di - obviously there is one source of extra cost)

In the older days there seemed to be more scope for riders/teams to use non-std parts such as Lightweight (the brand) wheels, ti bolt-tuning, lighter stems etc (eg from FRM) but nowadays that is less common as :
a) Teams want to enforce their riders using all parts from their sponsoring/supplying companies
b) Components are better
c) UCI weight limit - even with SRM/Powertap, bikes are hovering around the 6.8Kg weight limit so there isn't the same requirement to use more fragile components to drop a few grams.

cougie

In the olden days riders would ride the frames they liked and just have their official team respray them as their 'proper' bikes. Harder to do this with wacky CF designs though.

I do remember seeing Kelly racing in Puma shoes - with three white stripes painted down the side. :-)

tremayne

Anything over £10k will be an absolute exception and what is the point of talking about Cav's bike or Boonens bike when we are trying to establish a 'rough' price for the average pro bike (time trial machines excepted).

I would also state with certainty that the majority of pro riders will be on a frame which hasn't had significantly different manufacturing process. I'm almost certain it will have been given exceptionally stringent quality control but as for different lay ups, etc - I doubt it very much.

There's been a comment on Shimano Di bumping the cost, which I totally agree with.

The other significant cost are the wheels. Set of Mavic Ultimates anyone?!!

If the team were running old fashioned dura/sram/campy then I see £6k as a not unlikley sum. (not including an SRM)

There is no doubt whatsoever that it's very easy to spec and buy a better bike than would be issued to a pro. The weight limits have created this anomoly and pro teams are often having to add weights (suspended down seat tube) to get the weight right. It also throws up the odd situation where they are fitting supa-dupa lightweight parts to keep the sponsor happy, when this just means more weight being added! (they can't have a situation where the pro team is running less than top flight parts - would make the top stuff very hard to shift).

For what its worth I have an ex Garmin Transitions 2010 Felt F1 - bought direct from Slipstream Sports in the US. Couldn't be happier with it - but I don't kid myself that it's any different from a standard 2010 F1 (paintwork aside).

emadden

Rule74Please wrote:

All pro bikes are prototypes. Not the model off the shelf as you are often told.

average price is in the region of £25K for the tour

Please wipe the cornflakes off your forehead mate you are dreaming.

Most pros are on off-the-shelf stuff and anybody who tells you otherwise is a muppet. Yes some teams may be on specific prototypes for some components, or even frames, but those prototypes are being designed for mass-production. UCI rules effectively require products used by the teams to be available to the public,

The actual equipment used by all teams comes from a limited number of suppliers and hence the variation in equipment (apart from frames) is minimal.

Most teams will ride one of three groupsets (SRAM, Campag or Shimano). Top end groupsets cost in the region of GBP1200 to GBP1600.

There are more wheel manufacturers (such as Mavic, Campag (Fulcrum), HED, Zipp, Shimano, FFWD, DT Swiss), but in essence the usual "top-end" wheel that will be ridden by most of the team is in the region of GBP1200- GBP2000 range (max).

There are also numerous frame suppliers but the staples in the peloton are Cervelo, Pinarello, Cannondale, Trek, Colnago, Specialized.... Typical top of the range frames are usually in the GBP3000-3750 range.

Then there are pedals, saddles, bars etc also known as the "finishing kit". You can budget around GBP500 for a real top end kit!

So total of an exceptionally cool bike would be around GBP7000 (for example Sky's Pinarello Dogma with Shimano Di2 and a good pair of deep rim carbon wheels)...

cal_stewart

there was a list in some mag last year.

canyon about 5.5k as the lowest
and team sky top with 13.5k

that is both with power

rick_chasey

Cal_Stewart wrote:

there was a list in some mag last year.

canyon about 5.5k as the lowest
and team sky top with 13.5k

that is both with power

Shows how spending loads of money on a bike makes bugger all difference.

cal_stewart

think it was tour mag and they where saying the canyon was better. However the polar power meter is nowhere near the srm

calvjones

emadden wrote:

Rule74Please wrote:

All pro bikes are prototypes. Not the model off the shelf as you are often told.

average price is in the region of £25K for the tour

Please wipe the cornflakes off your forehead mate you are dreaming.

Most pros are on off-the-shelf stuff and anybody who tells you otherwise is a muppet. Yes some teams may be on specific prototypes for some components, or even frames, but those prototypes are being designed for mass-production. UCI rules effectively require products used by the teams to be available to the public,

The actual equipment used by all teams comes from a limited number of suppliers and hence the variation in equipment (apart from frames) is minimal.

Most teams will ride one of three groupsets (SRAM, Campag or Shimano). Top end groupsets cost in the region of GBP1200 to GBP1600.

There are more wheel manufacturers (such as Mavic, Campag (Fulcrum), HED, Zipp, Shimano, FFWD, DT Swiss), but in essence the usual "top-end" wheel that will be ridden by most of the team is in the region of GBP1200- GBP2000 range (max).

There are also numerous frame suppliers but the staples in the peloton are Cervelo, Pinarello, Cannondale, Trek, Colnago, Specialized.... Typical top of the range frames are usually in the GBP3000-3750 range.

Then there are pedals, saddles, bars etc also known as the "finishing kit". You can budget around GBP500 for a real top end kit!

So total of an exceptionally cool bike would be around GBP7000 (for example Sky's Pinarello Dogma with Shimano Di2 and a good pair of deep rim carbon wheels)...

I was following you OK until you called the Dogma a cool bike :twisted:

CyclingBantam

Ok, well probably the best source we have; Geraint Thomas responded to my question of how much were tour bikes, with: @BensBigTrip 25k sounds a bit pricey. Even with srm's etc I'd have thought around 15-10

So there we go.