My custom Allan Wanta is costing me $795 for the frame and fork, which seems like a screamin' deal to me. I gave him some rough ideas on the paint job and told him to use his imagination.
However, I'm getting the custom for some specific reasons.
A) I'm ridiculously huge and the only off-the-shelf 68cm frames I could get come from Rivendell with very large price tages.
2) I've been playing around with some designs in my head, and Allan was willing to build the bike to my somewhat wacky (or at least non-standard) spec's.
Sooooo... What I'm trying to say here is that there are some good reasons to go with a non-custom, such as:
i) No lead time. You can get the bike right away rather than waiting months or years
*) Quality control. When a company builds many, many bikes exactly the same, they generally work out the kinks in the design and the manufacturing processes. Have you heard the phrase "Custom part, custom problem?" I work in a shop that does lots of prototyping work, so I know how true that phrase can be! With an off-the-shelf Comotion, you'd get away from "custom problems."
I don't know the details about Comotion's product line, but they have a very good reputation in the industry. I don't think you'd go wrong if you bought one. Then you should ride it for a few months, come up with some wacky ideas of your own, and order a custom from Curtlo, Allan Wanta, or whomever you like. With the Comotion to ride, you won't be bugging the custom builder about the progress on your frame every 30 minutes. Then, you can build up the custom and do a side-by-side comparison of the custom vs. the Comotion.
You do have unlimited money, right?
- FBB
