i managed to grab a brand new but 'last seasons' model for £300 below original retail price in february, the only difference between the one I got (last years) and this years is the braking system on the new one is hydraulic and I have mechanical disks which are brilliant.
This years model has been out of stock since january and the usual online stores forecast it won't be back in stock until july-august lol, not bad - £400 extra plus a 3-4 month wait just to have slightly different decals and a meaningless brake upgrade.
I buy new bikes fairly infrequently, preferring to opt for quality, maintaining parts until they need replacing and only considering a new bike when the parts on the current bike are all reaching end of life, so a bike usually lasts me 5-6 years with perhaps some minor replacements like chains, brake disks and the occasional crank, never paid attention to 'trends' and whatnot, I just start searching for a bargain that ticks all my boxes about 6 months before my present bike is going to fall apart, so it surprises me to discover they started releasing ever so slightly altered versions of the exact same bike every year. Christ, consoomers are into fucking everything now?
Anyway, if you're not one of those fools who needs to have the very latest version I suggest you add '2018', '2019' or 2020' to your google searches.
