Originally Posted by
Lazyass
Keith Bontrager made the first compact road frame in '95 I think. There's a nice one for sale in the vintage section. But yeah the Giant really kicked off the whole compact frame craze. I remember when it came out it was like the most popular bike.
Charlie Cunningham made a few, too, and before Bontrager, but in evolutionary terms, any of those road bikes coming out of MTB builders' shops in the early days were dead-ends. The Giant TCR not only developed from it's own branch, it brought the design beyond a small corner of California and to a global, international audience, and equally importantly, established the Asian construction model that dominates today, so much so that even American brands which could have had an evolutionary link to the Cali pioneers, for example Specialized, are designing and selling road bikes directly descended from the Giant TCR, not from Cunningham or Bontrager. Same for venerable Euro brands like Colnago and Scott, but of course the greatest irony is that Keith's frame lineage didn't even live on at Trek, which acquired Bontrager in '95 or so.
Don't get me wrong, I have tons of respect for Keith as a pioneer and visionary! He did so much cool stuff, and really drove bicycle development. I remember buying a Switchblade for my GT MTB after he licensed the design to Tange, and later bought a Bontrager Racelight which was pretty sweet. I wanted a Road Lite, but never got one. As an MTB guy, the Road Lite looked right to me in a way the classic road bike never did, so I had no problems accepting the dominance of compact geo as so many in the roadie world did. Boy, did the roadies hate it...!