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WHY A WATERFORD BIKE IS A JOKE
WHY A WATERFORD BIKE IS A JOKE
An investigation consequent on being hounded by American roadies by Andre Jute Last year when I was shopping for a low stepover bike, Tom Sherman and other Americans, touting for business for their own industry, suggested I look at Waterford Cycles' Godiva model: http://waterfordbikes.com/now/models.php?Model=655 I looked, shuddered but said thanks politely, and moved on, eventually buying a German/Dutch crossframe mixte design with historic roots. Now a bunch of American roadies, led by Russell Seaton, have been hounding me for being different. Seaton cites the Waterford Godiva as the sort of bike I should have bought. All right, since these pushy roadies insist, let's look into a Waterford bike in more detail. The pricelist, here, http://waterfordbikes.com/now/pricel...dels&Model=655 reads like some kind of a sick joke. The bare frame with the cheapest lowest common denominator lugs costs $1800, a fork is $350 and up, getting the fork painted to match is another $125 (!). box "pinstriping" is $250, Rohloff dropouts $150, upgrade to decent Rohloff dropouts from Paragon another $150 (a total of $300 for Rohloff dropouts!). The total for the frame and fork is $2825. No, I'm not pulling your leg. I looked it up and wrote it all down, and then added it up carefully, several times. A Waterford frame with a fork and the cheapest lugs plus good Rohloff dropouts, with the single luxury of box pinstriping, will cost $2825 or 2130 Euro. Better lugs will drive the price up by a minimum of $225, and a machined brake bridge is $125. Remember these sums, for which you can buy a whole bike some places. The total of $350 for a lug upgrade and a carved brake bridge at Waterford is more than halfway to the price of a frame with superb lugs and paint from a distinguished bicycle maker with breeding, as I shall shortly demonstrate. So, $3175 or 2400 Euro for a rather commonplace Waterford frame and fork with pinstriping. GET A FRAME WITH BREEDING INSTEAD -- FOR A FRACTION OF THE WATERFORD PRICE! Hmm. In Germany, one can buy a Patria or Utopia custom-lugged steel frame, with fork in the same colour, and stainless Rohloff dropouts, and no thought of charging $350 extra (!) for the good lugs and the delightfully carved brake bridge, and box coachlining by a famous bikebuilder, for 700-850 Euro or a maximum of $1125, that's $2050 cheaper than the Waterford frame. And that is not for a common or garden frame, that is for a very special frame. Or, if you actually want the narrow-tyre road frame rather than the German frames for tourers with Big Apple balloons, you can go to Mercian for a Miss Mercian ($920) http://www.merciancycles.co.uk/frame_miss_mercia.asp or to Bob Jackson (prices from $653, including Rohloff dropouts) http://www.bobjacksoncycles.co.uk/de...c9 b6796b2ac5 and get a beautifully painted, arrow-lugged, luglined, frame and fork with a distinguished road pedigree. WITH THE SAVINGS OF NOT BUYING WATERFORD, GO UPMARKET Who in his right mind would choose a Waterford Godiva frame instead at over three times to five times the price of a Mercian or a Bob Jackson? A cyclist could have a Mercian or a Bob Jackson couriered to the street in front of Waterford Cycles, go ask them if they can match the pedigree, and still be ahead over two thousand dollars, essentially the price of outfitting a bike without ever asking the price of Rohloff/SON/BUMM/Brooks/Nitto/Ortlieb/the best of everything. A Waterford frame and fork alone costs as much as a completely equipped dream bike, with pedigree, from Mercian or Bob Jackson, fitted out with the best of everything. There is no contest. You're off your gourd, Russell Seaton, and your pals aren't any more sane. Waterford is a joke. IS WATERFORD'S GODIVA A MIXTE? There's another reason to give Waterford a big miss besides having no breeding and being grotesquely overpriced. It is that their frames appear to be bog-standard and dull. The same Russell Eaton we've already met as an example of someone crazed with roadie nationalism, also tells us that Waterford calling the Godiva a "mixte" frame is his excuse for taunting me that my Utopia Kranich unisex crossframe-mixte http://www.audio-talk.co.uk/fiultra/...20CYCLING.html is a "girl's" bike. (I'm not even bothering to answer such crass American stupidity.) A mixte is a bicycle with two thinnish bars running from the head tube to the rear dropouts (or frame-ends, to be technically correct). The Godiva doesn't have these mixte bars and therefore isn't a mixte. The Godiva is a simple traditional parallelogram ladies' frame, pretty commonplace really. What Waterford actually says about the Godiva is a typical piece of advertising department weaselling: that it has "a classy mixte profile". In other words, Waterford knows the Godiva is not a mixte but is trying to claim for the Godiva the prestige or perhaps the cross-gender sales of the (unisex) mixte. Russell Seaton simply was too crazed with nationalist roadyism (or should that be rowdyism?) to comprehend that Waterford were intentionally misleading him. Poor Russell. Copyright © 2009 Andre Jute. Free to reprint on not-for-profit netsites. For any other use approach the author. |
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