genejockey 

I think the gap between 1978 and today is so big that denying just how great most of the changes have been is just being curmudgeonly. BUT a lot of the biggest changes happened before 1995. Think about it - by 1995, we had Hyperglide, SIS, brifters, and dual pivot brakes. Those were big leaps. Everything since then is more incremental. The difference in performance - not just speed, but all aspects of performance - between my 1982 Lotus and my 1996 Ritchey is bigger than the gap between the Ritchey and the 2020 Canyon.

Oh, and I can work on all my bikes myself with simple tools. I actually had to buy MORE specialized tools for the older bikes.

PeteHski

For me it's not so much the 4 min speed improvement. It's the way the bike actually rides and handles. 40 years of development has improved both of those aspects quite significantly IMHO. The engineering is so much more refined too, although maybe you need to be an engineer to appreciate that aspect.

MattTheHat 

Well, I guess I *do* have some complicated tools!

MattTheHat 

CAR???? You drive a car? What's wrong with a horse and buggy?

genejockey 

Exactly. Difference in time over the same route is just one metric. Call it efficiency - the newer bike is just better at converting my effort into forward motion

Reflector Guy

There is probably some tiny incremental improvement that comes with threadless stems over quill.... That we'll soon be able to read about. That seems to be the theme of this thread.

genejockey 

I missed the shifting of the goalposts. Did you see it?

First it was
But when I demonstrated a 5% difference between 1982 and 2020 bikes, i.e. 5 times as much difference, it became...

blacknbluebikes 

By far, the most drastic change for me in 40 years is my damn budget.

Troul 

good news! you probably could finance a new bicycle!

MattTheHat 

As a unicyclist, at least you practice what you preach. I respect that. You don't even have two wheels!

Riding a lightweight bicycle that's comfortable, responsive, shifts flawlessly, never flats and stops well is very enjoyable. I didn't get there until I got away from steel and aluminum frame bicycles. And it didn't happen until I went tubeless, disk brakes, electronic shifting and a few other things. I spent 640 hours on my two bikes last year. I'm good with all my "unnecessary" exotic materials and electronic wizardry.

prj71

A 2021 road bike is still maintainable with simple tools bought today.

cb400bill

What do YOU think?

livedarklions

Well, not if you look now.

Jax Rhapsody

The smart tv reminds me of the car-puter phase. It wasn't big, or widespread, but people were building car-puters well in to the 00s, now there's no need. I wanted one just for all my music back then. I found a device that was short-lived by Pioneer that was basically like a trunk mounted cd changer, but uses proprietary harddrives, that worked with one or two of their headunits. Woulda been perfect, but around that time they started making headunits with usb ports and SD slots, rendering it and the carputers it was outmoding, outmodded.

I saved a fairly large tower to rebuild and make part of my entertainment system, it would do what a computer does, play music, surf the internet, all that. It hadn't pinged in my head that such a thing was already happening, with dvd players that you could plug a usd drive in to, and the advent of the Xbox- which played dvds and could store music by ripping CDs. Even the Playstation could be used as a web browser. Game consoles basically turned in to what I wanted to build, before smart TVs. Now, how you would watch Netflix is a matter of convenience, if you had a smart tv and a Playstation and/or Xbox. I still have and want to build that tower, though.Not only that, but before smart tvs, certain smartphones could plug in to tvs, and now you can connect them through a tvs bluetooth, even smart tvs that already have the youtube you'd broadcast to it, from your phone.

I understand the need for these things, even if I don't need them. Some of them have gone too far in my opinion, either by my preference(like infotainment car systems), or by reason alone, like 4k tvs. LED was good enough(I still want one), but 4k tvs ruin the experience for me, it does way too much and is more advanced than tv/movie production. The picture is better than even standing on the tv/movie set, I imagine. I know somebody that had one; you could see the tv magic, and watching a recent for the time(2017) movie with CGI, you could see the CGI, like it was say... Speed Racer, or Cat In The Hat, two early movies that over used the spit outta CGI. It was a movie beforehand, you wouldn't even notice cgi was even used in.

So why get the "greatest" in bicycles, when its benefits are marginal compared to somebody who would actually race it, not pull it out on the weekends, and maybe two hours before dinner? They got us believing 400 bucks is entry level or less, treating it like it's just a step over walmart bikes. Nobody needs di2, and the next four groups under it, are perfectly acceptable for some civilians bike, they all shift fine and the differences are probably marginal, but Shimano and the "experts" got you lying to yourself. Nobody needs brake by wire either. Not on the C8 vette, and not on some bike either. Bikes before Di2 were good enough, bikes without it are good enough, bikes have more gears than practically any big rig on the planet. Just wait till di3 comes out and it's bluetooth, people are gonna be like; "Di2 is garbage, it's practically Sora, you still using wired shifting? Di3 is wireless. all you gotta do is plug up your brakes, derailleurs, and brifters in to the powerbank charger. I'm rubbing my penis on it, while I type this."

livedarklions

That grossly overstates the case, though. In the last 40 years, the changes in electronics have been completely transformative, totally changing every performance aspect of the devices to the point that they're really not the same machines they were back then--a smart phone simply isn't just an evolution from the pocket radio, for example.

Bikes are still just bikes, materials are better and more varied, there's the opportunity to use different shapes in the construction, some of them are considerably lighter, some of them are marginally sturdier, but really their operation and capabilities aren't much different from what you could purchase 40 years ago.

Troul 

lmao!

Jax Rhapsody

That's just being a petty baby. Pro riders shoulda been more concerned about winning versus being covert. "Oh no, my plan was foiled, now he knew I shifted gears." I've had some clunky shifting bikes, where it sounded like it just threw itself in gear, and I've had some with a loud, crisp shift; it makes the bike sound healthy, it's shifting with conviction, it just snaps in gear. I like motorcycles that do the same thing. Hell... a loud sprag unit in a wheel has saved me from verbally making my self known to peds. Why say "on your left," when "chigchigchigchig" does it for you? I just like noisey stuff, I guess. A gear driver on a bmx is just a beautiful sound.

mstateglfr 

I consumer is best served by riding whatever the consumer wants to ride.
Some like older tech thats simple to use and service.
Some like current tech thats simple to use and service.
Some like modern tech that complicated to use and service.

What is a bargain to one person is trash to another.

genejockey 

40 years ago, you could also finance a new bike, just by putting it on a credit card. But do you remember what interest rates were like in 1981? You could get a 30 year fixed rate mortgage at 18.5%.

Jax Rhapsody

It really just depends. Like a number of roadbikes, mostly by Specialized, look like cantilever beach cruisers without the canti bars

livedarklions

So I totally don't get the point of the OP. Is the question whether anyone wants this stuff? The answer is clearly yes. Is the question whether some people don't want this newer stuff? I'd say there's a whole lot of bikes being sold without most of the doo-dads, but stuff like index shifting are things almost everyone prefers to the "old stuff". So obviously there's still a market for bikes with basically 1990s era technology.

Anyone have any idea what the percentage of bikes being produced today have carbon frames? For all the talk about carbon frames, it hasn't exactly revolutionized the mass market bicycle. Forks maybe, but even that...

Disc brakes on road bikes seem to me to be innovation for innovation's sake with no real benefit, but I really don't feel like arguing the point.

Troul 

true. The newer compact frames offered by other OEMs catch the eye though.

Troul 

Would have to be really hard up for improving the credit score.. or ruining it.

SurferRosa

Depending on the 1978 steel road bike you're talking about, I may be able to make a case for my bike from 1960 ... or the one from 1972 ... or maybe even the one for 1987. If you have $750, I might sell one of them to you.

tomato coupe

I didn't actually "see" it, but I heard a scraping sound as they were dragged along the ground.