Storck’s Fascenario.3 Platinum road bike costs £9,300

I'm struggling to see how a jack of all trades frameset like this would require any significant R&D costs, It's not as though you'd have to bend physics to create what appears to be a decidedly average frame - you can get a 200g lighter frame for half the price if you can ignore the serious aero credentials and a dedicated aero frame that weighs roughly the same

The high price goes towards the cost of the aero R&D. Carbon frames alone have now become cheap to make. Any chinese shop can you get a custom rig at a fairly afforable price. It seems like every brand is having to reinvent the wheel in terms of R&D, especially with the aero aspect of it. Hence they all charge high prices. As time passes and the technology will trickle down the features discovered in the R&D will start becoming more obvious to others and costs will start to go down. One thing about the technology in the bicycle industry is that the pace of obvious improvements to features is very slow. It takes them like ten years to realise obvious flaws in a design and then making changes; such as say moulding a shape one way rather than another, or pulling this plug instead of that one, or routing cables in a certain way. Only recently (~5 years) has high tech engineering been coming into the industry and still they can't get it right (judging by the prices). It's as if cycling tech isn't taken very seriously and when it is the prices are jazzed up like nobody's business. I can't say that I can blame the motivating factors. The sport itself has an incredible number of flaws to begin with. There are certainly much better sports to stay healthy instead. It could be argued that the technology itself is far removed from the practicalites of the sport. I digress..

Or a 5 speed.

Would consider it as a winter bike or one to get the kids into cycling...

For that sort of money I would at least expect a triple chainset option. 

To be honest, it just looks like any other carbon bike.

"A custom carbon fibre layup and careful tube profiling have resulted in a frame that weighs a claimed 840g and the fork is 330g. It’s not a dedicated aero bike, Storck has the Aerfast for the aero freaks, there are some serious aerodynamic influences in the frame design, most notably the bowed fork blades and Kamm tail shaped down tube which it calls Advanced Sectional Aerodynamic Shaping.

Comfort has been considered, and the D-profile seatpost is designed to allow a small range of saddle deflection. It’s the same story with the company’s own handlebar, which is designed to flex on just on direction, under the force of impacts travelling up through the front wheel."

Yet you've led with the price just to get some clicks.  Good one.  The true Daily Mail of cycling.

That is the exact same thought that popped int my head when I saw it .

9k+

with Ultergra?!

The world has gone officially stark, raving bonkers.