legrandefromage":3pt0bxpk said:
I dont get it - if it had any other name on it you'd all be shitting yourselves over it.
Its probably built by Saracen or Pacific so will most likely have Spinner forks and will be a hell of a lot better than some of the chuff that gets touted out as 'quality'
* but the above doesnt and will never count for Al Carter.
Never
Bloody
Ever.
My view is purely based on personal experience. I saved up all my birthday money, paper round pay etc and bought a carrera waikalou.
It was the same era as this, purple splatter and sun tour x1
My brother had a hard rock sport and my dad a courier comp
My bike was so inferior to those if was not funny. I suspect my current desire to keep acquiring quality mtbs is because of the trauma that bike left!
Fair enough this is the top of the range effort, so might be different, but my opinion is that these were cut from the same cloth, a decent spec on paper with a group set better than their price point, Reynolds sticker on the frame (probably a few tubes not full frame set) so theoretically all good, but in reality absolute dog turd
Not sure about "made by X", presumably they all contracted out production to factories in Taiwan, and set their own spec and quality control.
Anyway to end the story, so bad was the carrera I left it at a church fete for them to sell on, the week I got a Marin Bolinas