A sea of Canadian Tire SuperCycles
by Steve ~ April 20th, 2007. Filed under: Department Store Bikes.On one of our weekend rides, Mike and I began to realize that Canadian Tire Supercycle bicicyles are ubiquitous. Everywhere we looked we saw Supercycles. New ones, old ones, kids riding them, adults riding them, entire families riding them. They outnumbered every other kind of bicycle on the street by a longshot. In fact, I’d say they outnumbered every other type of bicycle on the street combined. Mike suggested that Canadian Tire is probably the most popular “bike shop” in the country. A couple of years ago, committed to Local Bike Shops, I’d have shaken my head in disgust. This year, owning and riding a Supercycle myself as a commuter bike, I’ve got a different take on things.
Why are Supercycles so popular? Well, the fact is that for most people, cycling is not an obsession. It’s just an occasional, pleasant recreational activity for which they need a specific piece of equipment. Most people are also smart enough to realize that for the kind of cycling they have in mind, the best piece of equipment isn’t a necessity. Canadian Tire has been Canada’s default hardware store for decades. It’s the place you go when you need a tent, a replacement part for your car, a soccer ball, paint… or a bike. Canadian Tire is Canada’s general store. Naturally, it’s the first place most people think of when they want a bike.
When you’re a family starting to look for a recreational activity you can all do together, having to buy a bike for everybody can be expensive. While Mike and I were sitting in Kildonan Park on Sunday a family rode past us laughing, obviously having a great time. They were all riding brand new Supercycles. The father was riding my bike ($99), and the rest of the family was riding the next model up with front shocks ($129.) There were five of them all together. Their helmets looked brand new, too. Total cost for the five bikes and the helmets at Canadian tire: under $800. And you know what? Those bikes will do just fine for the kind of cycling that family is going to do. If they go out every weekend for a spin around the park, say 10 Km (probably more than they’re going to do), they’ll be lucky if they do 240 Km in a year. I’ve already done 400 Km of pretty hard cycling on my Supercycle in the last few weeks with no discernible wear and tear. I predict I’ll push through 2,000 Km this year on my $99 bike.
Encouraging occasional cyclists to become patrons of Local Bike Shops just doesn’t make sense at all. For more serious cyclists who intend to pile on some kilometres, jump curbs, or explore wilderness trails, perhaps a more serious bike is a requirement, but not for casual cyclists. The bike snobbery evident everywhere, the derision that is showered on department store bikes, is uncalled for in my opinion, and unwarranted as well.
Sheldon Brown claims that the average department store bike is ridden 75 miles before hitting the landfill. That’s not because those bikes aren’t capable of being ridden farther than that, in my opinion (much, much farther) … it’s because the people who ride them are not committed cyclists, and wouldn’t cycle farther than 75 miles even if they’d been riding top-of-the-line Specialized, Rocky Mountain, or Marin bicycles. Encouraging them to spend hundreds of dollars on good bikes that will never be ridden is not the answer. Instead of lambasting them for choosing inexpensive Department Store Bikes, I think cycling gurus should be providing them with the information to maintain and get the most out of their cheapo department store bikes. Let’s face it, the majority of these people are never going to be LBS customers anyway, but that doesn’t mean they can’t enjoy the bikes they’ve got.
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September 8th, 2007 at 7:00 am
the sc 1800 from canadian tire is a fine commuter bike. it is not a trail bike but for the ordinary rider it is fine; comfortable with linear pull breaks and alloy rims. what does a local rider care about crashing down trails or paying the moon for too much bike. i have ridden this bike extensively and am 6′1 and over 200 lbs. it has given no trouble whatsoever and is hardly the bike of doom. the thumbshifters work perfectly as do the brakes; the selle royal seat is fine. i leave the high end bikes to the off road fantics.
September 8th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
I called the blog “Bike of Doom” because I didn’t expect much out of a $99 bike. Who would? It has, in some ways, pleasantly surprised me. In other ways, it has been a disappointment. Either way, it only cost $99, and for me, that was the whole point. I’m rather fond of my SC1800 now. It’s amazing how you get attached to a bike, no matter how cheap it is. “Bike of Doom” is more a term of endearment than a pejorative description.
But let’s face it, the SC1800 costs $99, and you get exactly what you pay for. I don’t ride it on trails. I use it only as a commuter bike. I had my first minor problems with the bike at about 700 Km (bottom bracket). More serious problems didn’t appear until about 1,600 Km (rear wheel). With upgrades to those trouble spots, the bike seems to be holding up well. If you look at the blogs of other people riding the sc1800, they had similar problems at similar mileage.
September 25th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
one more note about the bike of doom. i notice that bike shops are full of high end bikes needing extensive repairs as well. extremely expensive bikes remind me of people who would benefit from a toyota camry but end up with 100,000 dollar beamer. thorsten veblen termed this conspicuous consumption.
February 11th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
as you say, though, the bikes from department stores come either unassembled or dangerously assembled. so that family riding in the park comes to a road, can’t stop, and dies a horrible death. less dramatically, at the 100k tune up stage, the bikes start to FEEL terrible, even to the total amateur, and then the family is lost to biking forever. after only an $800 dollar investment for a few hours of riding. great value. not all weekend-rider bikes are expensive. you can find perfectly suitable and durable bikes, often with ‘3 free tune ups’ (or similar) which will take it through the break-in stage. they need cost no more than $300.
February 11th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Does anybody actually know anybody who died or was injured from riding a department store bike simply because it WAS a department store bike? I’ve heard that argument a bit, but I’ve never seen a story about it.
My feeling is that if riding a department store bike turns you off cycling, you were never going to be a cyclist anyway. I’d venture a guess that most of today’s most avid cyclists got their start on department store bikes.
You are right, though, in that these bikes are not expertly assembled. But neither are Local Bike Shop bikes in all cases. I point you to this post where the author upgraded from a Department Store Bike to a Local Bike Shope bike:
Young “wipper snapper”