Ride past any Dutch station and the racks are full of Gazelles that are older than the people unlocking them. Steel frames from the eighties, still carrying someone to work every morning. That is the whole argument for buying the bike once.
The object
The Tour Populair is Gazelle's classic roadster, and the 2026 C3 sells new for €1.099. The frame is steel, which means it can be welded, straightened and re-sprayed for as long as you care to keep it. The brakes are Sturmey-Archer drums, sealed inside the hubs where Dutch rain never reaches them. The gears sit in an enclosed hub, and a full chaincase keeps the drivetrain dry through every winter. Nothing on the bike is exotic. Every wearing part is a stock part at any bike shop in the country, which is why a forty-year-old example still rolls into a workshop and rolls back out fixed.
The sum
A basic city bike from a sports chain costs about €300. Ridden daily through Dutch weather it corrodes at the bolts, the bearings go gritty, and within five years the repair bill outruns the bike. You buy another. Across twenty-five years that is five bikes, roughly €1.500, and each one is worth nothing the day you replace it.
The Gazelle you buy once. You service it, and it keeps going. A well-kept Tour Populair sells on Marktplaats for anywhere between €150 and €475, so the money you put in stays partly recoverable for decades. Buy new at €1.099, sell years later for €250, and your net cost lands near €850.
| Gazelle Tour Populair | €300 city bike | |
|---|---|---|
| New price | €1.099 | €300 |
| Service life | 25 years plus | about 5 years |
| Marktplaats resale | €150–475 | close to €0 |
| Bought over 25 years | once | five times |
| Net cost | about €850 | about €1.500 |
That works out near €35 a year for the Gazelle, and the figure keeps falling the longer you ride it. The cheap bike sits closer to €60 a year, with a trip to the repair shop attached to every one of those years.
Ownership
A Gazelle earns its scratches. The steel that gets scuffed is the same steel that stays true, and a bike that has clearly been somewhere sells faster than a shiny one, because the next owner knows exactly how many more winters it has left in it. The chaincase and the hub gears mean you almost never touch the drivetrain. You pump the tyres, you oil the chain twice a year, and the machine quietly does the one thing it was built to do.
Verdict. The Gazelle costs a thousand euro once and still sells for a few hundred a lifetime later. The cheap bike costs three hundred euro five times over and sells for nothing.