Fenlason wrote:Giant was one of the Taiwan companies building bikes.. as was Hodaka. Giant finally decided to make bikes with their name on them also.
Even though for example Hodaka make bikes for many people it does not mean that all of them were the same. Each company would spec and choose what they wanted for geometry and sizing. They still designed their bikes.. they just did not manufacture them.
My understanding the reason bike production went from Japan to Taiwan.. was the currency issues.. The US dollar vs the Japenese yen.
right, I'd forgotten that Giant was actually one of the manufacturers.
I knew I'd over-simplified this ;-) Some companies certainly design some or all of their own frames (Trek, for one, has designed some of their frames). And there are many unique bikes out there that are domestically designed. As I'm riding an old school cruiser now, I see bikes from Felt and Electra in this segment that are designed in the US and built overseas, and the quality is good. We also have bike builders here in Oregon for niche markets who are doing very well.
I believe it was both currency and manufacturing costs that moved production out of Japan, as Japan (and Europe) moved out of their early post-war economic models (manufacturing of inexpensive basic goods: bicycles, motorbikes...recall that BMW was a struggling builder of motorcycles and puny cars after WWII, and Honda started up after the war building motors for bicycles) and into more mature economies (finance, manufacturing of high end goods). Taiwan was the "next Japan" (efficient mass production and low labor costs) and once western quality control appeared, Taiwan was the place to manufacture.
Also recall that back in the day a lot of the frames were hand brazed, simply because that's the way they'd always done it, or because materials like 531 required it. That 1979 bike of mine cost the better part of $1000 when all was said and done partly because the frame was hand-brazed silver soldered 531 tubing. In Taiwan, they learned how to machine solder frames for a lot less money. And the only two frames failures that I've experienced have been on European made frames, not Taiwan ones.