Why build in Quality?

[Red Mist_imp]

There's a difference between an assumption and an identifiable incentive.

Look at bicycles, as another example. For decades, they were made out of steel, and lasted forever. Those were lean years for the bicycle manufacturers and many went under. A typical steel bicycle frame will, without incident, outlive it's rider. Sell a bike, lose a customer.
So now bicycles are made out of carbon fiber--basically carbon-reinforced plastic. As soon as you get one little nick in the carbon-fiber frame, or a deep-enough scratch, the carbon matrix structure is compromised and the frame is considered used up. Now the bicycle builders Trek, Specialized, Felt, Cannondale, etc. are all making money hand-over-fist because we consumers are more focused on the magazine articles, performance, lightweight than we are about longevity.
And motorcycle reviews pretty focus in the same direction: quarter-mile times, dry weights, hp figures. The longest long-term review of a motorcycle I ever saw was about 9000 miles--barely even broken in.

This is exactly right. Talk about needing next year's frame before your current one is broken in...and guys are spending far more than the cost of CB1100 for a bicycle and frame. Far, far more in some cases.

Some guys have to have the latest and lightest and will buy a new frame just to save a few grams of weight. Seriously, a few grams. I know of a guy whose carbon frame exploded (they are under extreme tension) when he had an accident and the sharp slivers imbedded themselves in his leg. Took hours of surgery to clean it up. Not going to have that happen with steel or titanium or aluminium.

So what do we mean by quality ... the life span of a component on the bike in isolation or the entire package/product? Taking the view of the entire product I think the quality of today's products is well above those products of yesteryear. I can only speak from my experiences and looking at my vehicles from the 60s through 80s which had more metal in them, were heavier and gave an impression of being solid but by today's standards they perform poorly in terms speed, handling, fuel efficiency and safety, and had more things go wrong with them plus wear out quicker in some areas. Sure there are exceptions but on average it just seems like today's products and the lubricants used in them give us excellent longevity of the total package for the work output we demand of it.

Everyone draws that line at a different point on the spectrum (and many of us let the magazines draw that line for us), but if a model is released with tolerances to a thousandths of a millimeter, is its quality still acceptable if the material of which they're constructed is electroplated paper-mache?

Everyone draws that line at a different point on the spectrum (and many of us let the magazines draw that line for us), but if a model is released with tolerances to a thousandths of a millimeter, is its quality still acceptable if the material of which they're constructed is electroplated paper-mache?

That was a pretty cool bike, but I just spoke to someone who had the same experience as you did. Just after 50,000 miles it really started having problems.