Originally Posted by
stoneageyosh
This is going to be greatly influenced by the age of the beholder. A forty year old would probably say anything before 2000 is old. Others, ahem, however, idea of old is more like downtube shifter era bikes. Classic Rendezvous is of that mindset and there are others across a variety of interests.
That really depends. I'm using the definition from fashion where vintage means twenty years or older, and It's been quite a while since my fortieth birthday. I think drawing ones definitions from personal nostalgia is fraught with danger.
I think that bicycles have undergone more than a few aesthetic changes since the days when Merckx and Gimondi raced. People may grumble about brifters and pedals devoid of toe clips and straps, but perhaps an even greater visual change was to brake levers that ran the cables long the bars rather than having two huge loops poking out above the levers. I do tend to think that quill stemmed steel bikes from the mid to late nineties were at a aesthetic pinnacle. This is coupled with the fashion definition is why I pin the term vintage and classic there. It's more a matter of using these terms in revolt against the brutalist aesthetics and technical complexity of the modern race bike.
Bicycling and the bicycle seem to mean different things than they have for the majority of my life, and I'm definitely not on board with that.