Individual bikes: Custom-made: built according to individual customer requirements

Every Saturday morning, when the bike shop is at its busiest, a "yes-but-guy" inevitably blocks the sales assistant for hours. The yes-but guy wants the cheapest possible standard bike, but without the cheating parts. If it's not the spokes, the salesman fulfils the wish. Then the picky cyclist dislikes the shape of the handlebars and discusses the cost of replacement and return. At length. And with lots of "yes, buts".

When the Ja-Aber guy wants the mass-market silver-grey painted bike in dark green, the special requests have already doubled the price of the original standard bike (and driven the other people present to the brink of a lynching). The transaction would have gone much more smoothly if the bike dealer had immediately pulled out the catalogue of a modular brand. Their promise: A customised bike, from handlebars to tyres, sometimes even in the colour of your choice. You can also get something like this as a complete individual assembly - in this case, each screw is selected individually and calculated accordingly.

However, if you take the trouble to add up the price of your current bike from individual parts in a catalogue, you will quickly see that it will be expensive and difficult. Does the bottom bracket match the crank? The brake lever to the gears? The modular brands do this work for their customers. Most of them put together a complete bike that makes as much sense as possible as a basis for negotiation and give the customer a free choice in certain areas.

The bikes in the test:

Maxcycles Roadster 2x8 GT

Maxx Roadmaxx

Patria Falcon

Red Bull Blackforest-5

Simplon Nimbus

Sinus Nevada

Steppenwolf Tao SL

Utopia Speedster

The full-length article from issue 4/2006 is available as a free PDF download.

Downloads:

Modular wheels (pdf)