Maelochs

yeah, it actually is a fairly correct explanation.

Just because car makers can list the weight of a car ... is the weight accurate? When is the last time you weighed your car, or any car? Obviously options will change the weight ... and equally obviously ... People Don't Care.

No one is going to buy one bike over another because fo a one-pound difference. People will definitely choose one bike over another over a one-pound difference .... and will make that choice based on published weights, provided by the manufacturer, or by some magazine writer who wrote a review.

Most cyclists are smart enough to realize that the listed weight for a bike is not necessarily accurate, but still some parts of the brain will be influenced by the number ...... even knowing it is not an accurate comparison. And how many manufacturers want to list every frame size?

You need to remember, a difference of fifty pounds in a three Thousand pound car is what ... 1/600th? The difference of one pound on a a 20-lb bike is thirty times that ..... and in a car, the motor pull;s the weight.On a bike you are the motor. Note the subtle differences?

Yes, in part, manufacturers know that if they list a bike in a given size at a given weight, and a competitor lists a comparable model at half-a-pound more, that looks bad ... even though the bikes are not identical in any other fashion (slap on some light tires for that model, use lighter but more expensive cockpit components .... hoping to make up the higher cost with higher sales spurred by the lighter listed weight. And no one wants to be honest, publish an honest weight, and lose a lot of sales because of the asterisks and fine print (a simple disclaimer like "bike weight may vary due to component choices" (and already a lot of manufacturers have fine print explaining that the model they ship might be different than the model on the website ... if they run out of Shimano parts but got a deal form SRAM ... oops .... so long as the manufacturer can claim "comparable quality" ..... " so a manufacturer Could,if sleazy, build a up a few "diet" models and weight them and keep them in the factory store room in case of law suits ... )

But really, the whole issue of listing weights is just a rabbit hole full of rabid weasels. Seriously, weight is Important to cyclists .... not ultimate (to most of us) , but important .... and no manufacturer wants to list weights for seven models with seven frame sizes and seven build options ..... and then have to defend on the internet (social media would go nuts) if all the weights were found to be a little low ..... even if only a few grams ("We used a different tire and bar tape on our production models ... ")

Seriously, if a difference of a few hundred grams is the deal breaker ... either you are obsessed or worse. Pros don't care that much about weight .... they know they have enough motor to propel anything at a very high rate of speed ... when you see riders cracking on hard climbs, it isn't that they would have won the stage if they had only used just a single cage and bottle instead of two .... and for the rest of us .... an extra hour of intervals three times a week will outweigh any minor difference in bike weight.

We need to remember, one Big reason bike manufacturers started trumpeting low bike weights was because it was an easily understood, easily calculated metric. NOT because it was the most important metric, but because most consumers can relate to a claim like "For every gram we shaved off our latest (and lightest model, you can feel the power in your legs turning into more speed on the road." or "Don't spend your power moving mass---spend your power going fast." it was all hype, all ad copy ... a way to make a specific brand stand out from the rest ... and since (due to technology) bikes were getting lighter, lighter must be better, right? (And super hard super skinny tires must be faster, right?) Of course now we know that aero trumps weight, and wider, softer tires are faster for most uses (except track riding) ...

But ... we were sold "Lighter is Better" and a lot of us bought it ... and now we compromise an the quality of our riding experiences to have bikes which look good on paper ..... Well, a Little less so now, but there was definitely a stretch of several years when people went crazy to shave grams without ever asking how much it mattered in the physical world ... they were happy to have the mental edge of having drilled holes in every component ....

When I plan to buy a bike online, I Always find a source for the weight .... even if I don't fully trust the source ... not because i will only buy the lightest bike, but to look for anomalies ("Why does that bike weight that amount? It seems that is should be heavier/lighter with those components ... ") and when I get he bike I don't expect it to weigh what ever the manufacturer claimed, anyway .... pretty sure whenever they Do post weights, they weigh one of the six 48-cm frames they produced .......