Ugly modern bikes

Well I must admit
Some of these aeroformed modern carbon things are monstrosities.
Saw one Pinarello on CRC email labelled as 'coolest bikes of 2015' and I'm sure it rides like the wind but bit it's mega fugly.
Almost as nasty looking as those hideous modern front heavy MTB's.
I understand advances in tech but why the heck do they look crap? Designers trying too hard it just wearing shit lensed specs ?
Rant over.

Reduce carbon, ride steel

Any temptation I had to buy carbon disappeared after riding a Pinarello Dogma, which felt really harsh and hard on the road, might be ok for a TDF 20 something year old, but no good for me I've been to a few shows this year and talked to various people and I get the crazy technology with wheels and gearing, which is all about weight saving, but I've never been convinced that 'glorious carbon' is anything else but a moulded piece of plastic. I don't dispute there are great skills in the frame development but I don't see craftsmanship.

One of the best 'new' bikes I've seen this year is the new 'steel' Colnago Arabesque. It stood out like a jewel amongst the rows of carbon. Oddly enough at a premier London event where they couldn't display many models they had the Arabesque on show. I guess even Ernesto thinks it looks better

Maybe we wouldn't be here if we were not inclined towards the older styles.
I loath the trend for black everywhere. Tyres and brake blocks are ok, maybe cable outers otherwise nice and bright with plenty of polished alloy please. To me the optimum period for good looking bikes was just before integral brakes and gear levers came about. Hidden brake cables simplify the lines but skinny tubes, bright tape and all that silver shows a bike to its best.

Robbied196":9mc8ql4x said:

Reduce carbon, ride steel

Any temptation I had to buy carbon disappeared after riding a Pinarello Dogma, which felt really harsh and hard on the road, might be ok for a TDF 20 something year old, but no good for me I've been to a few shows this year and talked to various people and I get the crazy technology with wheels and gearing, which is all about weight saving, but I've never been convinced that 'glorious carbon' is anything else but a moulded piece of plastic. I don't dispute there are great skills in the frame development but I don't see craftsmanship.

One of the best 'new' bikes I've seen this year is the new 'steel' Colnago Arabesque. It stood out like a jewel amongst the rows of carbon. Oddly enough at a premier London event where they couldn't display many models they had the Arabesque on show. I guess even Ernesto thinks it looks better

Click to expand...

That Arabesque is very very pretty and so unlike the carbon beasts.
But it's nice because it's modern yet not styled by a halfwit.
The carbon and Alu bikes are horrid. Sure there's the odd half decent looking one but on the whole yuk.

I think something happened to design since about 2000 - before that even the carbon cycles were half nice-ish.
I watched a doc about Marco Patani on Netflix recently and his races bikes and the ones around that era were so much nicer aesthetically than the pigs we have today. Progressively things are getting hideous.

And please post some examples of
Modern vileness

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My thoughts are design evolution is a wonderful thing, form follows function and style is subjective. That being said the bicycle has had a good long run of incremental improvement, lets say from the mid 1930's through the late 1980's without a lot of visual change to the untrained eye. In the 1990's technology changed all that, first in materials then in advanced computer design and manufacturing that allowed (compared to the 1980's) cheap tooling, affordable commercial carbon-fiber and resin formulations that allow limited mass production of CF bicycle frames. Where this comes off the tracks is the precision required of the actual manufacturing procedure relating to human factors, preparation of coring materials, resin/hardener mix, percentage of resin to carbon-fiber by weight, autoclave time and temperature, cost cutting by bean counters, all of this has a effect on the final quality and safety of the frame.
With steel you can still get standard threading, the craftsmanship and the pedigree, and the wonderful little decal that reassures you, you know where your frame came from, who built it and what its made of, and best of all it gives you lots of hints that its about to fail rather than just snap in two.

This is my (new) 2015 Bob Jackson World Tour retro-grouch audax special (in work)




Happy Holidays: Mike :xmas-big-grin:

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It struck me recently that bikes may be getting like cars; designed by wind tunnels and focus groups to the point where they all look the same and have a plethora of safety features as U.S.P.s ( unique selling points ).

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My 2006 Trek Madonne is the least ridden bike I own. Not sure that I've ridden it at all this year. It seems very angular when compared to the - relatively - nicer looking late nineties OCLV that I sold which had round profile tubes. Albeit with a mass of bottom bracket and headtube material.
It's very light though, but as previously mentioned, less forgiving than all my other bikes.
As for small diameter tubes, even my 631 Bob Jackson has bigger tubes than the TSX Bianchi and Vitus GTI Gitane framed bikes that are my most ridden road bikes. They look so fragile to look at!
All my steel and the ti DynaTech are more comfortable than the carbon one though.
I think Pinarello started the real ugliness trend , with those wavey stays. Subjective I know, and ironic too as I wanted a Pinarello back in the nineties when I raced. But a steel one, naturally

Mike

Yes, terrible looking these modern bicycles...

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That would be nice to ride



In a crosswind