tugrul

Hmm, what then? Classic, Vintage & Used?

vincev

Heres showing my age.I started collecting bikes in 1970.This was the time when 10 speeds were really invading he U.S. The collectors of that era had the same concerns about the end of balloon tires,krates,etc.Many thought it was the end of bike collecting.The hobby evolved and those who saved the old style bikes saw the prices rise and started collecting the "new" quality 10 speeds of that era.What was quality back then is now considered a classic now.Hang in there and evolve with the hobby.

x136 

Nah. Put it this way: You bought your Ciocc nearly twenty-five years ago. Doesn't it seem likely that in the future, there will be someone who bought a CAAD9 twenty-five years ago, when they were the age that you were when you bought your Ciocc? This person might think that, man, stuff built 2000-2015 is really where it's at. He or she may even look to talk to others on the hypernet about bikes of that classic era...

I'm not saying that people who enjoy C&V bikes today are going to change their idea of what "C&V" means and pick up some swoopy monocoque Di2 monstrosity, but that to future generations, swoopy monocoque Di2 monstrosities will be classic and vintage.

531phile 

But this is the thing though. Who is going to risk their life riding a 30 year old carbon fiber framed bike? There maybe collectors, but it will be posted to a wall instead of riding. This is what I'm trying to say. C&V folks collect AND ride their steel/aluminum bikes, but I don't think they will do this with vintage carbon and since the majority of highend bikes now are made of carbon, I don't think there will be as big of C&V crowd as there is now.

PDXaero

I ride and race my 21 year old full carbon bike.
I think anything handmade will still be collectible. Current production CF Time bikes will be sought after until they no longer function. You just can't replace a broken stay or post binder.

WalksOn2Wheels

I think you might have a slight misunderstanding of carbon. It's a material with a pretty high tolerance for the types of stress induced by normal bicycling. It's throwing it into a car or against a pole that causes it to fail. The frames are built with a certain amount of deflection designed into the bike. That is, deflections under normal riding conditions. These deflections occur in the elastic region and do not "wear out" the frame.

I think a part of this idea that carbon "wears out" is the comparative differences between a 10 year old carbon bike and a brand new one. The 10 year old bike isn't any different from when it was built 10 years ago. Newer carbon frames are just that much better.

All that to say that there is no reason the carbon bike currently hanging on my wall won't last until a major collision or fall induces an abnormal stress to the frame and breaks it.

EDIT: Not to mention, a lot of the carbon failures in racing happen because of a part that is built pretty much on the edge of these aforementioned stresses. Add that to being ridden by guys who could tear phone books in half if you threw it into their chains, and you have a recipe for destroying carbon parts. I'm sure this is no different from failures of other lightweight metal parts built for racing. Hincapie's busted aluminum steerer on the Paris Roubaix race comes to mind.

WalksOn2Wheels

And in other news, the sky is not falling.

Chombi

Uhmmm.. about 26 years old already........and it still rides real nice, so nice that I ride it more than my steel bike these days......and I'm not planning on pinning it up on my wall in 4 years either.....

Chombi

Lenton58 

It is sort of a natural process, and there are parallel worlds. WW II fighter planes were ubiquitous for years after the war. Vast yards were full of them being bulldozed and torn apart for scrap — the equivalent of the dumpsters and the land fills heaving with CV bicycles. Some of these fighters continued careers in third world air arms. As time went on, survivors were picked up for collections anywhere they were found sitting — rotting. Nowadays they are being pulled out of the sea, picked off glaciers and dug out of swamps. Mega-heroic efforts are made to reconstruct these relics in ways that would have been unthinkable decades ago.

At the same time, jet fighter aircraft are largely being overlooked for a number of reasons. Not many are being flown in displays, and I’m thinking that an F-86 Saber is not going to receive the same riveting attention as a Merlin powered Spitfire. The very sound of that engine sends hearts racing.

Steel bicycles will become much more a niche interest. Diminishing stocks and parts will be commensurate with protracted restorations that will include replacing tubes. Exact replica frames and components will appear in the same way as classic motorcycles and even aircraft. Collectors will have smaller collections. Collections will attain an intrinsic value that will function as hedges against inflation. Vintage steel buffs and investors will be few. But, as you suggest, the CF niche may be even thinner. Thinner in the same way as there are fewer owners of F-86’s, Mig 17’s and F-104 Starfighters than P-51 Mustangs and Corsairs (that are still in competition racing).

Anyone who doubts what can be done to produce exact replicas of machinery can do a bit of research. Somewhere on YouTube there is a starting party attended by a large number of Vincent fanatics and their families. These are talented and skilled people. A group of them helped one their group to construct an exact replica of a Black Shadow* — 90% original parts. Even the carburetors were built from scratch. There may every reason to believe that if you are young enough you will see a new 2050 1965 Cellini in new, exact, replica Record gruppo. The end of classic and vintage as we know it. I’ll have a late 30’s Bates road racer, please.

* I saw this machine in Vancouver about a year ago — a stunning accomplishment.

ftwelder

I do think that older, more original are more "pure" in a C&V sense but that does not compel me to disregard or disrespect what others desire or possess. After a poster accused me of being a "purist" I became more aware of my comments.

my 1982 Grandis and '85 Fuji Team are in my collection. My 1994 FTW aluminum framed bikes are not. I guess for me the line is between those two dates. Going back a certain number of years (say 25 for me?) would work well with the N+1 equation.

RobbieTunes

No, but your arteries will...

If a person was never exposed to older bikes that much, it's hard to appreciate them. My "appreciation" for certain bikes began when I saw the TdF and the Ironman on TV. Before that, my only exposure was to the local hardware store bikes, the Schwinns of the wealthier kids in town, and the myriad of Sting Ray clones that existed growing up.

Never saw a derailleur until I went into a Sears store when I was 15 or 16. ("wow, that's pretty cool...")

Never rode a 10-sp until a Free Spirit when I was 17. (found out just how fast bikes can go)

First tri was on a $10 Schwinn Varsity. (wearing a Jantzen swim suit, you had to be there)

Walked into my first bike shop around 1986, sticker shock, walked back out.
First bike shop bike, 1987, same shop (from BF member GMS and Mrs. Smith).
Any appreciation I have for C&V is from the people I met around that time, and this forum.
The internet has really helped me to see the coolness of older bikes that I never knew existed.

The "diversity" of C&V is part of it's staying power. Mid 80-'s and newer is just my little chunk.
I doubt that will change much in the future, each generation to their niche.

Road Fan

Just to be clear, ownership of an on-topic bike is not a condition of participation in the CR list.

Bugs me when people seem to think that anything with Campagnolo on it is C&V.

Road Fan

ill

I think the jury is out about carbon bike longevity and durability. Will they REALLY stand up, or will long-term exposure to UV and atmospheric contaminants kill them dead? It's really hard even for the engineers to know for sure.

And if only a few protected "wall queens" survive, those will be collectibles to the riders who could not afford them when the bikes were new and the riders were kids.

slushlover2

Your 531 tubed bike is more likely to rust through and be unsafe than my Colnago C50 is to "turn to dust". In reality I have seen more unsafe steel bikes than any other material. I love my vintage bikes, but quit bemoaning modern materials that you are not familiar with.
To answer your original question, I think all of my bikes.Colnago, Litespeed, Softride, will be collectible.

RobbieTunes

I risk my life on a 24-year old carbon fiber framed bike all the time. There are few of us out there doing so, not because of the risk, but because there were relatively few sold, which means there are relatively few still out there.

There was an earlier thread here on C&V carbon, and the response was very substantial.

My main riding partner started out as a road novice on a 2010 model, 853-framed Mercier. It was too small, and one thing let do another. He now rides an NOS 1993 CF bike, just picked up a 1993 Trek 520, and his rain bike is a late 90's Jamis. His 2010 now resides with a guy who started on mid 80's steel, still has them, but loves the new ones, too. Perfect examples of how interest in C&V can go both ways, so to speak.

As far as your second point, you're correct on today's market, but the characteristics of many C&V bikes are drawing interest from the owners of new carbon bikes. I have sold several mid-80's bikes to people with $4000-$6000 carbon bikes, and they all say they ride the C&V more, perhaps because they're expendable, but somehow, the bikes seem to hang in there, eh?.

You're also correct from a pure supply-side position, and that is a point well made. When X numbers of steel lugged bikes are produced, X-Y tend to remain after, say, 20 years. When X goes down, so does X-Y.

Will there remain a burgeoning interest in mid-90's and newer alumabikes? I simply don't know. There certainly was a ton of them made, and if their riders shared the same experiences that I did with the bikes I like, I'd imagine so.

There are already fans of the "older" CF Trek OCLV's and Kestrel's, so we'll see how that evolves. They don't appear to have aged as well as many of their steel predecessors, though, perhaps because their owners rode the living daylights out of them.

The C&V crowd may shrink a bit as many of us age and stop riding, etc, but the bikes will likely remain, have new owners, and have newer, younger fans. I definitely don't plan on taking any of mine with me....so someone will have them, ride them, appreciate them, call them C&V, and fall over once in a while, just like I do.

RobbieTunes

or better, for that matter.

khatfull

I would argue that the high cost of ownership of turbine as opposed to piston has a lot to do with that....not the perceived "non-C&V factor" of the early jets.

I'd also argue that in the realm of jet fighter aircraft it would be hard to find anything MORE C&V than an F-86.

khatfull

Arrives today according to FedEx!

Road Fan

Saw a great vid about retrieving a B-29 from a frozen Arctic location - heroic, but tragic ultimately.

Utility is an important question. Seems to me a P-51 or even a Corsair are much more usable airplanes than a air-breathing rocket with wings, such as an F-104. Back when I built model airplanes, the writeups on those were that they flew like bricks until they reached the speed where the stubby wings worked well, and then they became high-speed arrows - not the best air-air combat craft due to a lack of maneuverability. If a hobbyist needs a jet warplane, there are probably better choices for a less-specialized pilot.

Kinda like bullding up a stayer or motor-paced speed bike as a messenger work bike. Whereas a '50's thru contemporary steel performance bike is still not too far from being a decent multipurpose bike.

Road Fan

Back in the '70s I hung out with the Chicago branch of the Vincent Owners' Club, which members usually rode Ducatis so they could have a "reliable" bike!! I'd love to see info or pics about that Black Shadow - I got to ride one once, but I couldn't afford my own.

auchencrow

People cling to the ideals and trappings of their youth, so I think these modern monstrosities will eventually find their way into C&V, and the bikes we lusted after will become more curiosities than desiderata.


- Was that more than 140 characters?

Lenton58 

I for one would be the complete "purist" if only I could afford it. CV anything bike in Japan is expensive. My income combined with shipping and the lack of a local network for trading and so on make for rather expensive projects.

Some of you may have seen the Simplon I just completed. The frame may be nearly 35 years old. And some of the parts are definitely vintage. Other parts are what I call "retro" that sort of fit with the bike. But the wheel set for example just screams 'm-o-d-e-r-n' . Not what I wanted, but it allowed me to get the machine on the road without waifu-san strangling me in my sleep.

My '85 Trek 560 is more on-topic. There are some retro parts, but also NOS vintage and used vintage parts, as well as the original finish and decals. My Vitus 979 is the most pure of my roadies. All the parts, both NOS and used, go back decades. But, as a whole, it may just fall short of 25 years. I don't know exactly when the frame was made. In addition, some people may not include early aluminum bikes in the idea of pure CV.

My salient point is that despite my less than pure, on-topic bikes, I am grateful for the forum and the companionship it provides in a shared passion. I don't think that there is another forum on BF where I belong more. And all you men and women who build and or restore these purebred classics get a lot of admiration and respect from me. Coming here gives me a chance to see bikes that I would very much like to own and ride. No "wall queens" in my tiny bike shed.

JunkYardBike

rootboy 

Everything becomes collectible. Sooner or later. Nothing wrong with carbon bikes, but I like the old steel lightweights. Just personal preference, of course.
I'd take the P-51 anytime, but wouldn't turn up my nose at an F-86 or MiG 15.

auchencrow

Oy! My garage is full enough!