BMC Team Elite 2008 - CANCELLED

BMC has announced that it has temporarily dropped the all-carbon fibre Team Elite 01 hardtail mountain bike frame from its 2008 range. The Swiss company has not specified exact reasons behind its decision, but did state that it was having difficulties meeting its rigorous quality standards tests during the latest production run.

"In fact, the rollout of this product started in 2007, but from the very beginning, technical obstacles in the serial production impeded the effective delivery into the several international markets successfully competed by BMC," read a release from the company. "Until last week, the Swiss manufacturer of high-end bikes hoped, together with its manufacturing partner in Taiwan, to be able to handle in due time the important quality fluctuations within the serial production.

"Unfortunately BMC failed to convert exactly the claimed quality level of the prototypes into the serial production," it continued.

Retail customers unfortunately won't be able to place orders for the new frame, but BMC insisted that its production issues would not affect existing agreements with its sponsored athletes and teams. According to BMC, only a later run of the bike is affected by the technical production issue and there are enough TE01 frames in existence that have already passed inspections to fulfil those obligations.

"In the customer's interest and in respect of the good label image of BMC, this very difficult decision had to be made," said BMC's statement. "BMC deeply regrets to disappoint in 2008 numerous potential customers who waited for a long time the delivery of their dream hardtail bike."

Despite the disappointment the company believes its decision is testament of its aim of ensuring it sells only the highest quality product to its customers globally. /GJ

Source : www.cyclingnews.com