You're right, bikes are not a commodity. You can look at that from different perspectives too. Some people may be willing to pay more for a toy - but manufacturers only have so much leeway in price gouging. Nobody HAS to buy a bike, and we have a lot of choices when it comes to which bike to buy. The average consumer has more swag than they realize.

A lot more goes into determining price (talking new bikes here) than manufacturing costs too. There's R&D, design and engineering, advertising and marketing, distribution, and numerous other costs of doing business - and even that is grossly oversimplifying. Every department, every vendor, every dealer, every employee along the line is an expense. And the company has to make a profit on each bike in order to stay in business and to continue developing new products. Now consider the fact that the manufacturer has to manage all of this for different world markets - all of which consume different products.

I don't work for a bike manufacturer, so I can't tell you exactly how much profit Suzuki makes on every bike they sell - but I'd venture to bet it's not as inflated as you think it is. To your original point, I'm on the same page with you in terms of it not being worth my money to spend nine to twelve grand on a new bike. But we're going to have to agree to disagree about the value of a new bike in terms of what you actually get for your money. Again, I personally will never drop that kind of coin on a bike - especially when I can do some bargain shopping in January and pick up a nice, couple year old, low mileage example for less than half of original retail. But when you consider the level of performance and technology you can grab off the showroom floor for less than ten grand, I don't think it's so crazy. Any new 2008 sportbike off the showroom floor is lighter, stronger, faster, more powerful, and handles better than most factory special racebikes (that often cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop) of ten or fifteen years ago. And you can put one in your garage for ten grand - with a fucking warranty!

And again - I don't dispute your point of some people thinking their shitty old bike has only depreciated sixteen dollars over the past decade. I just choose to look past those idiots and find a deal I feel good about. There are at least as many fair (and in many cases just fantastic) deals out there if you're patient and willing to look. IMO most of the guys that get ripped off end up paying too much because they're too impatient to look and wait for the right bike at the right price. The "I've got four grand in my pocket, what kind of bike can I buy this afternoon" mentally is rampant. If those guys want to pay too much for a shitty bike, it's their problem. Yes, I know that was one of the key points earlier. I don't dispute it, but I also can't fault someone else for getting top dollar for their sale (Providing they were honest of course. A shady deal is a shady deal, and that deserves a kick in the nuts.)

For those complaining about the price of new bikes - down on the dealer level, dealers gross an average of only a few hundred dollars per unit sold. To the average guy saving his paychecks for a bike that couple of hundred dollars might be a lot of money - but a dealer has to move a bunch of units just to keep the lights on and pay rent, before he makes payroll, orders inventory, or does anything else. Somebody mentioned it earlier, but most dealers depend on the service department to make money. Dealers hope every bike sold comes back to them for service.

Fairings? Yeah, the manufacturers (and the dealers and everyone in between) are going to make money on fairings - and any other replacement part. Sure, a few hundred dollars is a lot of money for, lets say for the sake of argument you knock your gixxer over in the garage and crack the tail. So you go to the dealer and buy a replacement tail that is made to fit and already color matched to your bike. All you have to do is bolt it on. Now lets say, for the sake of argument, that when you knocked the bike over it hit the fender of your car on the way down. What's it going to cost to fix the scratch and dent in your fender? Probably at least as much as to fix the bike - and that has nothing to do with the manufacturer or the price of factory parts.

Ok, advanced alloys. I said advanced, not exotic. Steel? How much steel do you think is used in manufacturing a modern motorcycle - especially a sportbike. Aluminum, titanium, and carbon fiber (ok, not an alloy, but a frequently used lightweight material) are the common players here. You could argue that aluminum is not an advanced alloy on the grounds that it is reasonably common and has been in use for a long time. Ok. Even so, the combinations change and are improved and advanced both in terms of the materials and the manufacturing processes. Last year Yamaha developed a new technique of manufacuring aluminum frames that significantly reduced the amount of welded seams in the finished piece. How much do you think that influenced the average R1 buyer's decision? I doubt many of them were even aware of it, but the development improved the bike they bought. New processes in castings and forgings continually make parts lighter and stronger.

I'm not even going to touch the Indian engineer comment. I think we've gone off topic enough as it is, and at this point I'm a primary offender. Plus, I've got some damn work to do!