While driving from the dinner, I saw a “Trek”:http://www.billingsgazette.com/newdex.php?display=rednews/2005/10/13/build/business/54-trek.inc store in China. Apparently late in 2005, they opened a store. Giant (the big Taiwanese bicycle manufacturer is here as well, but only sell low end bicycles), but Trek is going to seel more. Other interesting tidbits are that Trek itself has 35% of the US market and less than 4% of the worldwide market. It has $600M in sales and 1500 employees.
The Chinese Trek site is pretty broken with a combination of English and Chinese, but they appear to have both road bikes (????gong lu che) and mountain bikes (????. I’m not sure a pure road bike really works in China given the quality of the roads, but I saw one fellow with a Trek 4500 hard tail that looked like a good choice. They don’t have their full line, but appear to offer, road, mountain, cruising and kid bike On their site, some bikes to consider
* Trek Top Fuel SL. Dual suspension, carbon fiber OCLV 110 looks like its way too expensive to use twice in China, but is pretty cool
In terms of hard tails, they have their aluminum series:
* Trek “8900”:http://www2.trekbikes.com/bikes/bike.php?bikeid=1057600&f=18. ZR9000 alloy, Fox 32 F100 shock, Shimano XTR so lists for a breathtaking $1900. A 5′ 11″ with a 31″ inseam rides a 19.5″ frame size by the way which is a large.
* Trek “6500”:http://www.mtbr.com/reviews/XC_Hardtail/product_124746.shtml. This is the $780 MSRP or $680 US street price midrange alternative for Trek which is just a little bit lighter than the 4500.
* Trek “4500”:http://www.theped.com/viewbike.asp?BikeID=74&catid=3&subcat_id=8. AT $460 in the US, I don’t know what the Chineser price is but its pretty reasonable and its gotten 4.23/5 from “mtbr.com”:http://www.mtbr.com/reviews/XC_Hardtail/product_123246.shtml which is pretty amazing given the price. The main beef is that it is heavy.
The higher end carbon alternative is the “Elite 9.8”:http://www.mtbr.com/reviews/XC_Hardtail/product_123255.shtml with XTR components at $3000 street, its an amazing bike, but probably at that level a dual suspension makes more sense. Its just 21.5 pounds!
