Originally Posted by
vespasianus
But if "faster" is the definition, how much faster are they really? And I don't consider anything done by places like GCN "science". And lacking anything real, in terms of science, I fall back on something like plain old race times. And in that situation, while new "bikes" are faster, the amount they are faster is not as great as one would think. Again, look at my Ironman Kona post. You can also look at stage races and climbing times in the TDF. Now granted, times up Alpe d'Huez in the TDF are dependent upon lots of things, including EPO, but I am always surprised at how fast those old fat farts with heavy steel bikes and just nutty gearing went up those hills. The hell with aero, get me a safe version of EPO.
Modern bikes are expensive because people will pay for them. The shift did not occur today but in 2010. Lots of bikes in 2010 that cost $15,000. By todays level, that would be over $20K. There is a substantial wealth imbalance in the world and the rich are getting much richer and prices should reflect that.
The "performance" of today's bikes are questionably better. The rest is marketing to sell bikes. Nothing wrong with that at all.
That is true and back in 2010 nobody really cared about disc brakes and it was just the very begining of electronic shifting with dura ace di2 7970 introduced in 2009 even before back in 1993 Mavic invented the Mavic ZAP electronic derailleur and later reintroduced an improved version of it the Mavic Mektronic in 1999. If we count how many races were won with mechanical derailleurs against electronic derailleurs , the mechanical derailleurs outranks the electronic ones for their ease of use, longevity and their simplicity of being fixed quickly. Let's not forget
. I don't think that modern bikes perform much better than a well tuned and maintained bikes from 10 or 15 years ago. Some people like to buy new bikes like they buy a new car during a certain period.