Surly LHTs are fine bikes -however, since this is a board, I've got some opinions on them:
LHTs -at least over here in the USA -pretty much were the only option for touring bikes for quite a time at the touring entry price point, and you could also add in the fact you could buy a frame only (which, on the face of it, means you can seemingly get a purpose touring frame at an even lower price point -unless of course, you actually added up the real costs -but at least it
felt like you could). Add to this Surly is owned by QBP -which meant they could market the bikes through their own sales channels -QBP is
the really big time supplier/distributor for almost all local bike shops, and it meant you could go down to almost any bike shop and order one (this at a time when you were lucky to even find a touring bike in a shop). So the sales channel was really excellent, and then the marketing chaps at Surly gave you the idea that Surlys were being knocked out by some tattoo grunged gnarly American iron worker in the back streets of some gritty American metropolis (stroke of marketing genius!).
Anyway, this meant, in my opinion, they became the de facto touring bike in the States. And, I have to say, for good reason: the frame, though not fancy, was touring specific and well built. Given all this, and with the internet forum boards, I think the LHT gained a little bit of a touring legend status -a status I can't help but feel is not entirely deserved.
But here's the rub; I'm convinced it wasn't so much it was
that good, it was just that there wasn't any other reasonable competition within the same price point, let alone having the marketing or sales outlet power or the jazzed up image generated by Surly marketing machine. The mantra became "get an LHT" whenever someone asked "what touring bike" (assuming they were on the lower end of the price spectrum).
The truth of the matter is that LHTs (at least the ones I've seen) have in my opinion, at best, mediocre paint finishes (admittedly they could have improved since I last saw one), are heavy, use (in relative terms) lower specced steel and are knocked up in some factory in Taiwan (Surly Bikes, by the way, is based not in some gritty metropolis, but in the safe middle class suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota, home of America's largest shopping mall, and I'll bet the executive management wears ties, too
Ordinarily I wouldn't put this sort of stuff in a post, but if you visit the Surly web site, the image it tries to depict is so far off reality and so full of marketing [insert whatever word you want here] seemingly aimed at adolescent boys, I just can't resist.
Finally, I do want to reiterate LHTs are good and worthy bikes (I'd recommend one for the price point it occupies over here in the States), just that I think they really aren't that great. I can't help but think there has to be better options over there in the UK. Maybe it's the fact they aren't that common in the UK it gives them a bit of cachet?
