The utility cyclist wrote:for decades it's been a fat bloater* and not value for money, the name was the only thing keeping it going with people buying it having had one BITD or knowing someone who had one and lusted over it
It wasn't a bad bike as such, just that the competition for people's money had moved on ... a lot and prices for bikes had gone downward for what you could buy whilst Dawes kept knocking out Galaxy's at more than the competition.
Latest 'Ultra' Galaxy is a bog standard Reynolds 520 with Sora 3x9 for £1200, that's right TWELVE HUNDRED oh and it's even heavier than before at 15kg.
2002 Ridgeback Comet is 12.6kg for a ladies and under13kg for a 56 male variant, that's incl guard/rack and pedals. A standard Galaxy in the 00s was 14.5kg
They seemed to get heavier and more basic after they outsourced frame manufacture. The pricing became uncompetitive and I remember talking to a sales rep. at a bike show years ago and he basically admitted that the far eastern framebuilder had them over a barrel.
Mine's a '94 model (25" / 64cm frame size) and weighs around 27lb/12.3kg, with mudguards but no racks. The later models I test rode felt considerably heavier, albeit with racks and heavier wheels/tyres for touring.
To be fair though people rave about the Surly LHT but that really does feel like an overbuilt bloater. I'd rather have a Genesis Croix de Fer. Hard to find a decent off the peg steel frameset that isn't made of gas pipe (or with horribly stiff forks for disc brakes) these days!