iTREK_

So, I’ve been wondering, how old does a bicycle have to be to be considered; a Classic, Vintage, or Antique? What are your thoughts?

retroman57 

Classic= 1945-1965
Vintage= 1966-1982
Antique= anything older than 1945 (pre war)

All a mater of perspective I suppose...

merziac

Its somewhat of a judgement call and IMO becoming more so as time marches on. There are standards of them for many things and loose interpretations abound.

You can google them for the quick and dirty, specific numbers are highly debatable depending on what, where and whom.

Most of us have our own version and support each other as well.

cyccommute 

Your list applies well to road bikes and, possibly, cruiser bikes. For mountain bikes you should move up the dates by 35 years and compress the range significantly. For mountain bikes

Classic = 1978 to 1985
Vintage = 1985 to 2003
Antique would fit in to the Classic category.

Wildwood 

i pass this time around.


edit: Or should it be = Fold

repechage

Thought about that briefly while riding my 48 year old bike home from work... in two years it will be 50.

Bianchigirll 

SJX426 

I agree and for me, for some reason, I think of antique as something kind of rare, certainly the parts, and something I would ride only for the experience and not for long distances. Of course early safety bikes and high wheelers are always the mental model of an antique.
Classic is anything that continues to be admired, collected, desired and recognized as contributing to the evolution of what it is.Vintage to me is simply a time period. I suppose in many ways, I am vintage and certainly not classic! Possibly antique. I work with a Director who is about half my age and he likes me because of my totally different views and perspective! Riding a high wheeler would fit.

Moe Zhoost

Sounds like my commuting bike, a 1972 Raleigh Super Course. Funny, I never thought of it as anything other than transportation as it's not really a classic, vintage is a word with ambiguous meanings, and antiques are something to be put in a display case. If I were to apply a single adjective to my bike I would call it functional.

RobbieTunes

Call your bike what you want.
Call my bike what you want.
Buttercup is good.

As soon as you designate, you self-appoint, and you are zero-cred, FBI material.

RobbieTunes

I support that.

madpogue 

So, rolling the clock back to the beginning of 2003, when this section of the forums started, those definitions would have been:
Classic= 1928-1948
Vintage= 1949-1965
Antique= anything older than 1928 (pre-Depression)

I don't recall a whole lot of discussion about '50s or early '60s bikes in this section back then.

madpogue 

+1; actually, it'd be cool if the forum software had some artificial intelligence built into it, and could automatically steer anyone starting a thread on this topic to one of the existing 246495234 (give or take) threads.

bikemig 

Why look for answers when you can start the same old discussion all over again?

Wildwood 

most excellent hazetguy


iTREK_ and RedSon = Welcome to C&V on BikeForums

Bad Lag

Classic - it's a design or style; bike can be new, as long as it is classic.

Vintage - refers to the year of manufacture;

Antique - term not used here; usually refers to things more than 50 years old

nlerner

Seems like this topic is a classic considering how often it repeats.

madpogue 

Well it probably will be in a few years, when this section gets to be 20 years old.

Reminds me of when I turned 42, I told people that my drinking age had reached drinking age.

Bikerider007

I just bought a new bike that I consider an instant classic.