Ugh....

While not official, Shimano, the Godzilla of the cycling industry, is about ready to release an eleven speed mountain group set. I talked to a Shimano rep yesterday and he said it's gonna happen. While he wasn't forthcoming with too many details he did say that the rear hub is going to be radically reworked in order to make it happen. No word on axle lengths or through axle variations of this new configuration. Also, nothing as of yet in terms of what group sets are going to be affected by this change or anything concerning prices or due dates.

It's also disappointing to hear that the majority of Shimano's components will no longer be made in Japan but are going to be made in Malaysia, Taiwan, Indonesia. Shimano has been doing this for a while with their lower end group sets but he indicated that this shift will extend up to both the XT and Ultegra level mountain and road groups.

While SRAM has been having their group sets farmed out to Taiwan for a while they've also been having tremendous quality control issues as of late. I saw that same dynamic happen when I worked for Bianchi when Hodaka moved their production from Taiwan to China. Let's just say the first couple of production runs weren't so hot. That said, as dodgy as those first offerings were from the Chinese factory they were still better than what Treviglio was doing with the so called "Reparto Corse" division.

Hang on folks, it's going to be a bumpy ride.