Oh man...I think I just became a collector

[Hotwheels.]

I think Peachy's lad summed elegantly it up here:

This is brilliant!
Like when she asks why I have so many pairs of trainers…I’ll always have feet darling.

 

[retrobikeguy]

You only have to watch the latest version of the gmbn bike shed to see the chat on on the retro bikes that we have, compared to what will you be hanging on a wall as a current bike in 20-years ..... You won't, can't beat early innovative, experimental designs, individuality and colour.... Modern bikes could learn so much as now all they have is innovation that leads the sheep.

Just my opinion

 

[Tsundere]

You only have to watch the latest version of the gmbn bike shed to see the chat on on the retro bikes that we have, compared to what will you be hanging on a wall as a current bike in 20-years ..... You won't, can't beat early innovative, experimental designs, individuality and colour.... Modern bikes could learn so much as now all they have is innovation that leads the sheep.

Just my opinion

I'm torn on GMBN, now and again they put out something genuinely interesting but overall it's very very corporate and often feels forced, at the end of the day they exist to sell and without modern bikes and trends they have no income, it's always interesting when they bring up retro. The cognitive dissonance is real, on the one hand they know, oh they know that the old bikes are on another level for the reasons you described and more, the history, the stories, there's real authentic romance attached to those old classics and the era which birthed them, something which the modern industry will never be able to successfully reproduce or manufacture.

The thing is there's no money for their sponsors in retro bikes, it's a world that exists outside of their economy, it's an organic and genuine grassroots passion hobby, something else they are constantly trying and failing to simulate. The trouble the modern industry has is that mountain biking is a solved technology, the closest they can hope to come to having their version of the ATB revolution is making e-bikes mainstream, beyond that all they can do is come up with colour schemes and names and maybe the very occasional minor improvement to existing tech in order to persuade the masses to upgrade from last years mass produced cookie cutter soul free Chinese import, they'll never have their revolution.

Anyway, GMBN and their sponsors would love to kill off the retro bike scene, it must sting every time they see an old war horse still doing the business, especially when they know nothing they make today will stand up to that kind of test over several decades, retro MTBs serve as an inconvenient reminder that standards have slipped. For that reason I do enjoy GMBN squirming whenever the subject is raised, and I kinda respect the way they manage to somehow shoehorn in a modern bike to sell us despite their recently voiced albeit grudging acceptance of its obvious and innate inferiority in all aspects except age and technical advancement.

 

[frkl]

You're here for ever, there is no way out!

The truth is though that these old ATB/MTBs are just about as close to peak bike as we ever got, any decent quality rigid bike from the era with nice low mileage components can form the basis for a build suited to almost any kind of cycling activity (with the exception of competitive road or downhill racing) - commuting, touring, bike packing, cruising, trail riding, gravel riding etc etc, and they compare very favourably on price generally speaking.

Ultimately they were built to very high standards, even many mid range consumer tier bikes are of a higher quality in terms of tubing and workmanship etc and the groupsets were famously overbuilt, anything from LX up in good nick is going to take any punishment you can throw at it, same goes for Suntour and other equivalents.

So they are great bikes in their own right, nostalgia plays a part of course, but it really does come down to the fact that while the sport was in its infancy the cycling industry was forced into a situation where a handful of visionaries were already years ahead of the game, and so there was something of an arms race where quality and durability were at the heart of almost everything that came out, along with the incredible levels of innovation, and on that journey from early klunkers to the highly evolved downhill racers of today, ie during the late 80s and early 90s, they hit peak bike almost without realising it. That's why Surly et al exists, and good luck getting an early Surly, which is no more than a fairly decent imitation of a 90s rigid mountain bike, for less than a couple of grand, and why would you when you could get the real thing for much less than half that?

That's what I tell the wife anyway.

The thing that i really love about 90s mountain bikes is that the technology was so undecided. My biking roots are in road--my first real bike was a Bridgestone RBT and then I bought a celeste Bianchi road bike when the RBT was stolen. It was "only" an Alfana, which was the entry level Bianchi USA road bike in 1995, but it was still lugged, made on Italy, and had a horizontal top tube. (I still have it, but have sense removed the brifters and put on proper downtubers.)

But road technology was basically settled in the decades before 1995, if I can grossly oversimplify. But there were so many different solutions to the problem of mountain biking. Geometries, materials, everything was in flux. It was an exciting moment in bike history.

 

[frkl]

I'm torn on GMBN, now and again they put out something genuinely interesting but overall it's very very corporate and often feels forced, at the end of the day they exist to sell and without modern bikes and trends they have no income, it's always interesting when they bring up retro. The cognitive dissonance is real, on the one hand they know, oh they know that the old bikes are on another level for the reasons you described and more, the history, the stories, there's real authentic romance attached to those old classics and the era which birthed them, something which the modern industry will never be able to successfully reproduce or manufacture.

The thing is there's no money for their sponsors in retro bikes, it's a world that exists outside of their economy, it's an organic and genuine grassroots passion hobby, something else they are constantly trying and failing to simulate. The trouble the modern industry has is that mountain biking is a solved technology, the closest they can hope to come to having their version of the ATB revolution is making e-bikes mainstream, beyond that all they can do is come up with colour schemes and names and maybe the very occasional minor improvement to existing tech in order to persuade the masses to upgrade from last years mass produced cookie cutter soul free Chinese import, they'll never have their revolution.

Anyway, GMBN and their sponsors would love to kill off the retro bike scene, it must sting every time they see an old war horse still doing the business, especially when they know nothing they make today will stand up to that kind of test over several decades, retro MTBs serve as an inconvenient reminder that standards have slipped. For that reason I do enjoy GMBN squirming whenever the subject is raised, and I kinda respect the way they manage to somehow shoehorn in a modern bike to sell us despite their recently voiced albeit grudging acceptance of its obvious and innate inferiority in all aspects except age and technical advancement.

Couldn't agree more. i can't imagine that many of the things that pass for bikes today will be 100% usable in 30 years, the way a bike from 1992 can be bought used today and riden tomorrow, if necessary, without worrying.

Oh man, no batteries that fit ...

The fact that retro bike tech still works so well, apart from maybe a gummy rapid fire shifter, is a big problem for bike manufacturers and their mouthpiece in the bike media.

But not all hope is lost for selling new bikes. In a forum I have since given up on, someone posted this,

All Terrain Bicycling: An ATB Manifesto

We think it’s about time the cycling community reclaimed the term ATB—All Terrain Bicycle—to describe a certain type of bike. Read our thoughts here.

bikepacking.com

About how ATBs are coming back. The first picture reminded me of my 1992 MTB, being resold to gullible consumers as something new. i wrote an admittedly snarky reply that got me labeled an "old guy", which I guess isn't entirely wrong...

But if there is one thing that really gets me, it's rebranding passed off as innovation.

 

[Tsundere]

Couldn't agree more. i can't imagine that many of the things that pass for bikes today will be 100% usable in 30 years, the way a bike from 1992 can be bought used today and riden tomorrow, if necessary, without worrying.

Oh man, no batteries that fit ...

The fact that retro bike tech still works so well, apart from maybe a gummy rapid fire shifter, is a big problem for bike manufacturers and their mouthpiece in the bike media.

But not all hope is lost for selling new bikes. In a forum I have since given up on, someone posted this,

All Terrain Bicycling: An ATB Manifesto

We think it’s about time the cycling community reclaimed the term ATB—All Terrain Bicycle—to describe a certain type of bike. Read our thoughts here.

bikepacking.com

About how ATBs are coming back. The first picture reminded me of my 1992 MTB, being resold to gullible consumers as something new. i wrote an admittedly snarky reply that got me labeled an "old guy", which I guess isn't entirely wrong...

But if there is one thing that really gets me, it's rebranding passed off as innovation.

Thanks for that link, they have no more ideas.

 

[M-Power]

I'm torn on GMBN, now and again they put out something genuinely interesting but overall it's very very corporate and often feels forced, at the end of the day they exist to sell and without modern bikes and trends they have no income, it's always interesting when they bring up retro. The cognitive dissonance is real, on the one hand they know, oh they know that the old bikes are on another level for the reasons you described and more, the history, the stories, there's real authentic romance attached to those old classics and the era which birthed them, something which the modern industry will never be able to successfully reproduce or manufacture.

The thing is there's no money for their sponsors in retro bikes, it's a world that exists outside of their economy, it's an organic and genuine grassroots passion hobby, something else they are constantly trying and failing to simulate. The trouble the modern industry has is that mountain biking is a solved technology, the closest they can hope to come to having their version of the ATB revolution is making e-bikes mainstream, beyond that all they can do is come up with colour schemes and names and maybe the very occasional minor improvement to existing tech in order to persuade the masses to upgrade from last years mass produced cookie cutter soul free Chinese import, they'll never have their revolution.

Anyway, GMBN and their sponsors would love to kill off the retro bike scene, it must sting every time they see an old war horse still doing the business, especially when they know nothing they make today will stand up to that kind of test over several decades, retro MTBs serve as an inconvenient reminder that standards have slipped. For that reason I do enjoy GMBN squirming whenever the subject is raised, and I kinda respect the way they manage to somehow shoehorn in a modern bike to sell us despite their recently voiced albeit grudging acceptance of its obvious and innate inferiority in all aspects except age and technical advancement.

Best post i have read in a while Modern bikes are just way over engineered for H & S requirements. Its not all about powerful disc brakes. The old bikes are much lighter and give so much more feedback when you ride. Its just a much more rewarding experience unless your name sounds like a disease and you ride Rampage trails.

 

[frkl]

Best post i have read in a while Modern bikes are just way over engineered for H & S requirements. Its not all about powerful disc brakes. The old bikes are much lighter and give so much more feedback when you ride. Its just a much more rewarding experience unless your name sounds like a disease and you ride Rampage trails.

The over-engineering necessitates more engineering to compensate.

It is also pretty amazing to me how bike manufacturers managed to add so much weight on to bikes while convincing riders this was ok.

But I guess ultimately you just slap an electric motor on it and all's forgotten...

 

[Tsundere]

The over-engineering necessitates more engineering to compensate.

It is also pretty amazing to me how bike manufacturers managed to add so much weight on to bikes while convincing riders this was ok.

But I guess ultimately you just slap an electric motor on it and all's forgotten...

E-bikes are a lot of fun, it's a cheap way to enjoy the kind of riding that up until recently was reserved for petrol heads, so I'm all for it, and of course the presence of a motor offsets the extra weight in some ways, although in terms of handling, that's another matter. More weight = more momentum, so more energy is needed to manoeuvre, control and stop the bike. e-bikes are great but it ain't cycling, perhaps the greatest thing about modern e-bikes is that they allow people who would otherwise be unable to take a bike offroad, people with injuries or disabilities etc, that's wonderful, but like 3D movies, it's really just the latest desperate rolling out of gimmickry by an industry losing its ability to fleece the masses, and it will remain forever niche.

One thing they never mention, what happens when something fails? I can carry my Fat Chance for miles if i have to, pushing it is effortless, but you try pushing a dead e-bike up a hill and you can forget picking it up.

Ultimately it's one of my great pleasures in life, watching greedy corporations - and it's not just cycling but everything is infected with this - flailing around as they desperately try to invent the latest big thing and corral the masses into their shops, when we all know that the next big thing always comes from kids being creative while at play, but of course they can't control or prepare for that, so they are forced to manufacture artificial versions in the hope that something sticks. It works on many people, plenty out there who need to be told how to spend their money in order to have fun.

 

[frkl]

E-bikes are a lot of fun, it's a cheap way to enjoy the kind of riding that up until recently was reserved for petrol heads, so I'm all for it, and of course the presence of a motor offsets the extra weight in some ways, although in terms of handling, that's another matter. More weight = more momentum, so more energy is needed to manoeuvre, control and stop the bike. e-bikes are great but it ain't cycling, perhaps the greatest thing about modern e-bikes is that they allow people who would otherwise be unable to take a bike offroad, people with injuries or disabilities etc, that's wonderful, but like 3D movies, it's really just the latest desperate rolling out of gimmickry by an industry losing its ability to fleece the masses, and it will remain forever niche.

One thing they never mention, what happens when something fails? I can carry my Fat Chance for miles if i have to, pushing it is effortless, but you try pushing a dead e-bike up a hill and you can forget picking it up.

Ultimately it's one of my great pleasures in life, watching greedy corporations - and it's not just cycling but everything is infected with this - flailing around as they desperately try to invent the latest big thing and corral the masses into their shops, when we all know that the next big thing always comes from kids being creative while at play, but of course they can't control or prepare for that, so they are forced to manufacture artificial versions in the hope that something sticks. It works on many people, plenty out there who need to be told how to spend their money in order to have fun.

Pedalecs have their place. We got a cargo bike through a grant program here that partially funds them for businesses, as a way to get a car off the street. It cost almost as much as one...

It is an aircraft carrier, and I am glad for the motor. But it is almost like owning a car, you even have to take it in to a dealership each year for service or the warranty lapses.

I see more and more e mountain bikes on the trails, and really don't like that they are legally the same as bikes. On the forest roads going up its not such a big deal, but then they plow down the same trails as non electric bikes. With the extra weight they must do serious damage.