SpeedofLite 

Three articles are presented here. The first is a road test of seven small frame bikes (PANASONIC Sport, UNIVEGA Nuovo Sport, SEKAI 2700, RODRIGUEZ, MARIPOSA, PROTEUS, MEDICI Pro Strada).
The second article , "Getting Started with a Small Frame", is a brief review of test riders' opinions.
In the third article, framebuilder Bill Boston is portrayed as a "Crusader for Short Cyclists".

non-fixie 

Thanks again! I really appreciate these posts.

Mrs non-fixie never managed to grow above 5'4" so the subject of small frames with short top tubes is of particular interest.

The Panasonic bent top tube seems to be "inspired by" the Francis Quillon design he made (and patented) in 1978 for Méral:

ThermionicScott 

Interesting how the solution for toe overlap has long been known (smaller front wheels), but so many bike makers refuse to learn.

Korina

Oh they know, they just don't care. It's much more profitable to stick with the broad middle section of riders than the few outliers, i.e. the tall and the short. Even Liv, which is supposed to be all about women, puts 700c wheels on all their bikes.

I'm 5'4" myself, and very happy to ride my converted classic mountain bike (the RockHopper). Shorter stem and swept bars = decent reach, and 26" wheels feel perfectly proportional. I do wish someone would make brakes for smaller hands, but I cope. And cranks. Great Ghu why does no one make 160 cranks for under $200? Okay, SunTour makes short mtb cranks, but they're 9-speed, only available in black, and they may not be an easy swap for the original SunTour X1 7-speed. And what about road bike cranks? I have a Trek MultiTrack I want to build up as a rando/tourer, but my short legs (and knees, and hips) don't appreciate 175 cranks. /whine, sorry.

Kuromori

It's easy to blame profits, but if it costs more, it's reasonable to expect the costs to be passed down to the consumer, a cost a consumer may not want to bear. These are things that bike companies have to bring in from outside too. It's not that they're making rims and tires too big, they're designing framesets around industry standards and bringing in industry standard parts. Anything less standard either means either they have to use different specs for different sizes at which point the XXXS is basically a different bike with different cost, or they have to offset increased costs of small sizes unnecessarily on the middle of the bell curve bikes because small riders aren't paying the additional marginal costs of designing an entire bike line up around small sizes.

Also with smaller wheels, the consumer ends up holding the short end of the stick in terms of replacement parts. It's relatively easy to find 559 slick tires of medium width. It's harder to find high quality skinny road 559 tires and tubes in stock. It's even harder if you have some weird size like 24" or 650B skinny road tires. If a 650c bike is really that desired, there's always the companies actually making 650c junior bikes and selling it as a different product because it is a different product.

In regards to cranks. there are a few different 152-155mm square taper crank arms for under $50 like the Origin8 ones.

ThermionicScott 

I don't buy that for a second. Smaller wheels of some kind have always been available (longer than 27"), and when the will is there, good products are made. The proof is that plenty of high-quality small-wheeled bikes have been made throughout history. There is no need to make excuses for the bike companies.

jdawginsc 

I remember that article. Especially remembering the Proteus bike.

Kuromori

You can't blame profits then claim there's no additional costs. If there's no additional costs, how can it be eating into profits? Likewise, if there's additional costs that the consumer is unwilling to bear, why would they even enter that market? If the demand isn't there and people don't pay for products to justify the cost of manufacture and distribution, they don't get made unless you can con investors to keep funneling you money. This isn't about unfair and manipulative business practices. If you want to blame ignorance of manufacturers for leaving potential profit on the table, that's a different issue, but really it's just short people getting shafted from being a niche market because they are on the tail end of the bell curve.

If you want small wheel bikes, they exist, and you have to pay for them. No one said you can't make a high quality small wheel bike, that's a nonargument. Even if you bring cost down at the manufacturer, small wheel parts still suffer from economies of scale in both manufacture and distribution due to being a niche market. It's also incredibly silly to obsess over wheel size when you have things like cranks which are actual biokinetic fit points not being being proportionally short.

ThermionicScott 

I'm sure the most profitable thing would be to only make one frame size, that which fits people at the very top of the bell curve. (Raleigh did this with a few models BITD.) From there, every additional size is a judgment call.

I'd argue whether the smallest sizes need be that much more expensive to make, though -- small wheels allow you to keep about the same frame angles down to the smallest sizes, allowing you to use the same lugs. Then it's just a matter of cutting the frame tubes shorter and sourcing smaller wheels and tires for the smallest sizes.

I agree that crank length needs to be a part of the solution. 175mm cranks have no business being on Korina's bike! In the smallest frame sizes, a slight up-charge for shorter cranks (or downgrade in prestige branding) would probably be acceptable.

We're probably more on the same page than I give credit for, but I just chafe at some of the tired excuses that are thrown around instead of serving the smallest and tallest cyclists. Shutting them out hurts cycling as a whole, IMO.

shkimjohn

Thanks for the share! It's good to know that there have been bikes made before the 00's for smaller riders. I'll be adding some of these on my radar to look out for on craigslist...