Those two sentences back to back. Comedy gold. I love it.
so why add the expense of adding a finish that will not-slowly wear off?
Because it actually is meant to be a fashion display piece for a currently trendy genre of bicycle from a company known for little else than being fancy. Even if a far off yesterday’s definition of fancy was slots & drillium, today’s fancy is minimalism… see: Tesla- a child’s fever dream.
I can’t fault a company for doing what they have to to remain relevant & profitable. I still think it’s uglier than the worst of any Bauhaus or Brutalist influenced consumer products and couldn’t be saved from my (yes
oh so important & relevant) scrutiny by merely omitting the black finish.
I hope for Campagnolo that many people going trail biking think they should have the best possible grouppo for playing in the dirt. Thirteen exotic Italian cogs and one lonely goofy little granny ring. I hope they’re all so uncoordinated that they can’t work two derailers and haptically-challenged that they can’t work Shimano’s brifters without mittens making Campy’s brifters seem essential to them. I hate seeing companies with families depending on their survival fail due to marketing missteps.
It almost definitely would be a huge business mistake if some weak minded high-up at Campy happened upon my dumb ass at Kanza or someplace on my Sugino/SunTour/VO covered 26er with downtube shifters and let me accidentally convince them to go on and devote R&D & marketing money at replicating all of it right down to my beloved BR-MC70 cantis & Symmetric shifter but more polished and actually pushing it on the public expecting more than 30 buyers worldwide. I would love it and would buy that groupset, but I’d also recognise the move as terrible for trying to move units to the greater world trail biking populace.
The majority demand cheap crap. A decade or two in the future they’ll demand cheap bare aluminium with drillium and I’ll have come around to black painted understated gothy hardware by then.