genejockey 

Excellent! That's much more appropriate given the routes are generally fixed!

jfouellette

It s not that they don t market to multiple user types. I suspect that most of the marketing and advertising money focuses on the performance market. Why? That s where a lot of profits are. These customers are willing and able to spend the money on their hobby. This is a hypothesis of course since I don t have the in depth information.

big john

Sure he has. Two of his bikes are in current threads in general. I think most of us don't care what he rides. It's when he says that we are all wrong for having newer bikes and we are gullible for falling for the marketing and he is morally superior and our bikes are garbage and all the other bitter old man tripe he spews.

Just read his last post, his bitterness is starting to come back out after he supressed it for a while.

big john

The high performance segment of bicycles sales is tiny compared to the rest. Tiny. Sure, those are the expensive bikes but most people buying expensive bikes know what they want or they have enough disposable income that it doesn't matter.

We keep seeing people insinuate that high end buyers are stupid and gullible. They fall for the marketing because the bike manufacturers tell them they can go fast.
They spend their last dollar to try and be a racer wannabe. B.S.

I ride with 2 road clubs and know people in other road clubs, I have ridden with racers, pro and amateur. Hundreds of people. They do research and buy what they want, they aren't falling into some marketing trap. If one spends $14K on a bike, they know it isn't going to make them faster, they just want it.

Koyote

Edsel was a model, not a brand. And I'm not sure that it supports your point, since it became noteworthy precisely because the marketing was so bungled that people wouldn't buy it.

big john

Edsel was as much a brand as Mercury. And they were butt-ugly which may have contributed to their demise.

Clyde1820

I suspect that's mostly due to passionate frequent posters tending to be enthusiasts for the activity (of cycling), and posting accordingly. And the "with-it" contemporary thing is, after all, zippier expensive bikes, the hottest cool thang, kit clothing, team colors, etc.

Yet, I'm with you on the sentiment. The whole of cycling isn't what some imagine from a discussion or two, or ten. For me, it's always been about the enjoyment of the journey and getting from A to B. How speedily I happened to get there was never the point, with me. And I suspect many millions of cyclists the world over think similarly. Haven't ever done more than a few speedy "group" rides. Haven't ever done more than a handful of quick, gotta-get-there routes. Instead, I have always tended to make the time available to have a comfortable trip (whether riding or running). For me, it's more about the "battery recharge" and the experience than it is "lookin' good" or how rapidly I arrive.

To each his own ... where everyone's happy on their own routes in their own way.

genejockey 

No, it was a brand. It wasn't the "Ford Edsel", there was a range of 4 models when introduced - the Pacer, the Ranger, the Corsair, and the Citation. It was a separate division. And it wasn't that the marketing was bungled. It's that nobody liked them.

shelbyfv

I know a lot of riders who aren't fast, never have been and never will be. They still appreciate nice bikes.

genejockey 

Also, my point about marketing is that consumers are not sheep. They don't simply buy what advertising tells them to. Edsel was heavily marketed, but people didn't buy them. There are all sorts of reasons, including the 1957 recession, but the point is that consumers have agency and make choices. We may complain about how hard it is to find rim brakes on higher end road bikes these days, but a lot of that is driven by demand - people aren't buying them.

Koyote

Wow, I learned something today! Never knew that it was a brand. But it still was noteworthy as a marketing failure -- the exception to the rule that marketers can sell things that people never really wanted. Hell, it was literally a textbook example of this when I was an undergrad almost forty years ago.

Koyote

It's not just marketing. It's the mere presence of new things, the emulation effect, conspicuous consumption, etc.

I'm going to recommend two books to you: The Affluent Society, by John Kenneth Galbraith, and Theory of the Leisure Class, by Thorstein Veblen. I believe the former is from around 1957, the latter 1898. If anything, they are even more relevant today.

big john

Yes, I think they did everything wrong.

livedarklions

I don't think it's an issue of whether most people ride for pleasure (although that's probably a USA/Canada perspective because utility riding is relatively rare) , it's the idea that there's a clear line between riding fast and riding for pleasure. I'm finding the OP annoying because I ride fast for pleasure and I don't find I need to get in a pissing match with someone because they ride differently from me.

If you enjoy the way you ride, that's great.

genejockey 

My point was that it's not the exception to the rule, it's evidence the rule isn't actually a rule. Commercial history is littered with Edsels - heavily advertised, carefully positioned products that fail because consumers really can't be relied on to buy things they never really wanted.

Mind you, this is not to say that people do not occasionally have sheep-like tendencies, but the assumption that we'll all buy sand in the Sahara because we're just that gullible has been the downfall of many a company.

Nooner

Holy cow !
I thank the OP for his opinion on what is pleasurable cycling.
My pleasure INCLUDES speed.
Now get out of my way ...

Koyote

I agree somewhat. But I think the counter -- the sheep-like buying of whatever is put before us, just because it's there and it's in advertisements that feature people whose lives look better than ours -- is so normal that we ignore the literally countless examples that are all around us.

jfouellette

High end buyers are not stupid and gullible. They just see value in different things. They are also willing to be early adopters of technology for example which is very useful as a way to drive innovation. In many cases we would still have one speed bikes if it wasn’t for them.

2manybikes

Some say riding for pleasure is one thing, and riding for speed is another. Riders that ride for speed get pleasure from the speed.
Amateur racers that work hard and get exhausted get pleasure from that. I get pleasure from riding my fast bikes fast, my slow bike slow, my mountain bikes on dirt and all the different king of road going bikes on the road. Fixie, cruiser, single speed, frankenbike, Ti road bikes, aluminum road bikes, hybrid, C&V bikes. beater bikes. The trikes with the dog in a basket. The plain trike.
It's all fun. No one type of bike defines my personality, style, choices, or makes me care about what others ride.

If you want approval and attention from all kinds of riders whatever they are on, get a bike or a trike with a cute little dog in it. Even guys on Harleys will approve.

PeteHski

Do you think multiple competing manufacturers would actually try to make their halo pro level bikes and components faster? That's how competition generally works IME. Now cycling is a marginal gains sport and progress is slowed up by restrictive technical regulations. But they have still improved a great deal in my lifetime i.e. 55 years. There's no way I want to go back to riding anything vaguely competitive on my steel bikes from the 80s or 90s. Especially not on period tyres.

rsbob 

I’m thinking of the little piggy that ran all the way home or had an incontinence issue.

Maelochs

You are treading on dangerous ground here. Obviously your biases have in the past and might in the near future cause your willful ignorance to be revealed ... a form of humorous self-ridicule in which I do not think you would choose to engage.https://bikeraceinfo.com/tdf/tdfstats.html

I will grant you, despite 2022 being the highest in a while .... yes, for the past 33 years the speed in Grand Tours has remained about the same .... but look at the distance. See how it changes each year? That is proof that the highest possible finishing speed is not a factor in course design or in product design.

Each Tour is self-contained, and DESIGNED—read that again—to produce approximately the same level of performance---approximately the peak level of performance achievable by a modern athlete using modern training methods, riding nearly identical, weight- and component-controlled bikes.

Tour stages are designed, each year to do different things, and the whole Tour, each year is designed with differing philosophies. I recall a period where the Tour was exceedingly hard .... lots of long stages, really brutal mountain stages .... at other times stages were loaded with hard climbs, and lately mountaintop finishes are more prominent. Also, the occasional shorter stage is featured now.

In all cases, the organizers are trying to stimulate excitement during each stage and during the Tour overall. (Same with sprint points, time bonuses, etc.)

Organizers found that on stages with too many climbs, riders didn't attack early; everyone waited for the last climb because no one wanted to crack and lose the Tour on one stage. The really long, hard stages didn't separate out the weak and strong, they made everyone ride more cautiously. Short stages, if used at the right time, gave riders more incentive to push, because they might be able to get and stay away.

Tour stages, and the Tour itself is NOT (did you read where I wrote "not?") about always going faster than the year before. When the peak of human performance (hopefully only modified by a few drugs) is reached, greater speed is not possible anyway, but greater injury is .... another reason super-hard Tours are not popular. Riders cannot afford to burn out in the middle of the season.

Got it? The peak of human potential on a diamond-framed bicycle, at UCI-legal weight, with modern riders, has been calculated, and each Tour is designed to Try at least, to push riders near to maximum performance without causing undue rider failure (physical breakdown.)

As riders get faster, stages are adjusted so that riders have to work as hard as they can across three weeks. As stages get too hard, next year the Tour is adjusted to be a little easier ... enabling the greatest number of riders to achieve maximum performance. Nobody would enter a Grand Tour if the rider afterwards needed six months' recovery

If the Tour was all about speed, the bikes would not have a minimum weight limit, or the limit would be 1.5 or 2 kg lower.

If the Tour was about top speed, riders would be on recumbent on the flat stages, and fairings would be allowed.

Another point you ignore or just don’t get----the Tour is NOT about selling “race bikes.” As it happens, the UCI does not permit road-racing “race bikes.” In every other form of wheeled competition I can think of, there is a class or many classes, of vehicles design Purely for racing. Most of these could not even be operated on a public street.

Tour bikes are like the old NASCAR stock cars—the ones actually built on passenger-car chassis—or like old Trans-Am, where the cars were modified road cars (or GT4 and to an extent GT3 today, but who cares?) Except UCI road-racing bikes are actually "stock." They have to be bikes which can be purchased at any dealer by any buyer with enough cash. If they were "race" bikes the climbing bikes would all weight 12 pounds and the aero bikes would have faired wheels or whatever .... and recumbents would absolutely be used in every flat stage.

Disc brakes are not about speed. They are a huge upgrade in breaking performance for those who choose them and know how to use them, but not everyone will benefit from them …. Racers, streaking down mountainsides at maximum velocity, certainly can, but they have to haul the weight uphill as well. However, it is arguably better for riders to climb a little more slowly and not blow tires due to overheating on the downhills.

Even so, discs were not (as they were with cars) developed and introduced to make the vehicles Faster (or capable of sustaining higher speeds longer before braking points, or to be more reliable do that when a driver hit the brake the car slowed.) Disc brakes are useful on bikes because they allow wider tires in a given fork size, work well in all weather conditions, and can be applied at maximum force with less physical force, and thus should be more manageable. I cannot say they are All that … but I don’t love or hate them. They are what the industry believes is an advancement … so they show up on Tour bikes. NOT to make the Tour bikes faster, but because the Tour bikes are actually bikes like you or I can buy at the showroom and ride.

Clear so far?

We can draw conclusions ... but I am not quire sure what your conclusion is. If your "conclusion" is that all the added tech does not make bikes faster ... well, obviously. On the other hand, the average Tour speeds do Not prove that.

If I have not expressed this clearly, please tell me ... i will reformulate and try to say it more clearly in fewer words.
Again, you cherry pick facts and present them to support your biases. Your audience is not stupid and no one is fooled.

The reason for more gears is that more gears, up to a point, are better. Having started riding when the three-speed was the top of the heap, moving up to ten-speeds and on up ... I can attest to this. Having more gear choices allows one to find the optimal ratio for each situation, which gives the greatest efficiency. Not everyone needs or wants or notices or even cares ... heck, a lot of people I have talked to riding low-end bikes with 3x7 triples don't even know how to shift, or just shift the front.

That is not who the 22- and 24-speed drive trains are made for.

And yes, Shimano Could have introduced 12-speed way back when, (or at least nine-speed--there was a lot of design and testing about how narrow a chain could be, how precise a derailleur could get, how thin a cog could be and how close cogs could be)) and did deliberately upgrade in increments .... Shimano Is a Business. it is easy to tell the people who have never worked for themselves---they see management and business owners as Evil. You start a business and see if you don't strategize to maximize sales and plan product introductions so as to maximize profits. When doing it right means rent or no rent, you grow up fast.

And your snarky quip about 1x .... either you are Jethro Tull's first actual "concept album" or you are deliberately dishonest. 1x is all about not needing a large number of gears off-road, where riding styles are drastically different. For most MTB riders, a front derailleur was unnecessary weight and potential breakdown, because off0road riding is Not all about aerobic efficiency---getting into your long-and-low position and long stretches of pedaling at a steady cadence with maximum efficiency, where precisely the right ratio is a bonus. MTB is more about shorter bursts of more intense pedaling followed by a brief, intense, downhill followed by more hard pedaling. Off-road, most riders found that they simply didn't need all the closely-spaced gears ... but no one sold 42-tooth cogs, or derailleurs which could handle 10-42 or whatever ... so 1x was not really feasible.

Once the engineers---you know, those guys who are so evil, they keep making bikes better---realized that in some applications, a triple was three-times overkill, they began experimenting with derailleurs which could handle the swing, and for people who didn't need max efficiency but wanted max simplicity, voila ... 1x.

Far from being any kind of nefarious scheme an you portray it, 1x is a very large improvement for certain riders in certain situations.

Again, are we clear? If not, please point out where I am not being clear and I will try to improve my communication. So ... what are you on about, then?

Polaris OBark

Just so everyone knows, this thread succeeded beyond any reasonable expectation.

Clyde1820

One of the more-astute and -curious scientific minds of the past century had some thoughts along these lines, regarding how we see things and what value we attribute to things (from our perspectives).

roytar

Speed is not going to matter soon when e drives and batteries are minimized to the point where all bikes will have them and everyone will fly by you without peddling. How quaint! He's actually peddling the bike with his feet!
So slow down now and enjoy the scenery!