I’ve always been curious why single speed bikes can be sold for double the price of a relative road bike. A road bike has more components more gears (and often is lighter). Single Speed bikes are supposed to be sleek, simple, easy to maintain. With simple steel Cro-mo frames you would expect them to be cheaper. But, actually they are more expensive, which seems to defeat some of the point of them. I guess, economies of scale have lot to explain, if you make bikes in big numbers, you can just get better value.
Single Speed bikes do have the capacity to turn my head, I’ve seen this one a few times in Oxford, and liked its bold simple colours. Create bikes are not too well known, but, they are cheap for single speed. £200 – £300 rather than double that (e.g. like popular Charge Plug). To me it looks the archtypal bike – classic frame geometry, steel frame. Simple design.
All Create bikes are fitted with flip-flop hubs which means you can switch between single speed (freewheel) and fixed rear wheel.
At £270, I could justify spending money (I’d worry too much about leaving a £600 bike locked in centre of Oxford), but, practicality may rule it out. I invariably use panniers, and like most other single speed, they are too cool to have pannier eyes – too bad!
I liked the idea of little maintenance but even with 36x 18 on my mtb I would spin out on the way to the trail.
The weather is always changing, windy etc and I ride different routes from flats to hills.
Single speeds are not for me unless I had fixed short commute.
Sorry but give me gears anyday!
Fixie prices are probably more to do with the nature of their target customers than the actual bike production itself. There seems to be an inverse relationship between the large profit margin added by the manufacturers and the IQ of the urban warriors riding them. Darwin in reverse.
Of course, not every fixie rider is like that, and I can see the attraction of fixie riding, but it does seem a little like inventing the computer and then choosing to operate an abacus instead.