Originally Posted by
MNHarv
I'm probably way off here but I've come away from reading this entire thread thinking these are essentially under equipped randonneuring bikes. Because a randonneuring bike would fit all the criteria of a gravel bike and offer the rider a few extra accoutrements.
Plenty of randonneuring bikes use skinny tires and race gearing, and really wouldn't fit the criteria of a "gravel bike" very well at all.
For the randonneuring bikes that
do fit the criteria of a gravel bike, I'm not sure what benefit there is in discussing them as if the categories are mutually exclusive. When the mid-century French constructeurs built fat-tired low-geared randonneuring bikes, they did so primarily because their clients were intending to ride them on gravel roads in the mountains; I think it's neither inappropriate nor confusing to refer to those bikes as gravel bikes. Similarly, if the "extra accoutrements" you're referring to are things like bags and lighting systems, it's not like people never equip their "gravel bikes" with such features.