PeteHski

+1000
It's a favourite strategy for Luddites to pass anything new off as "marketing".

mschwett 

+100,000

it’s also a not so subtle way to to imply that we’re all naive and easily fooled whereas they are discerning and wise.

Mojo31

It’s also a way for those who can’t afford it, but wish they could, dismiss it out of hand.

PeteHski

Exactly and most of them actually believe it too!

livedarklions

It's also ridiculous to pretend that it's somehow sinister that marketing is involved in engineering decisions. The relationship between marketing and product design/engineering is so complicated that knowing that marketers were involved in the development tells you absolutely nothing about whether the product is useful. Just as a for-instance, smart phones could be engineered to be much larger or much smaller than what are generally available now. The size is market-driven, based on consumers' preferences.

There's really no substitute for becoming knowledgeable about the product in making decisions as to whether it is worth it to you. Generalizations are pretty worthless, unless you happen to have a preference for old or for new just for their own sake.

livedarklions

This works both ways and applies to a lot of stuff besides bikes. We try to show we're smarter than others by trashing their preferences.

The snobs and the reverse snobs are equally tiresome in my eyes. We have no reason to care about other's opinion of our preferences.

Chandne

So is it settled now that wireless droppers are a great advancement for mountainous areas? I think this thread has pushed me over the edge on that. Discs were settled a while ago, after I used them.

rekmeyata

This was the best thing written about this subject, and it was concise.

rekmeyata

Innovations don't always drop prices. Cars are a huge example as in the case you brought up; in the mid 60's the average car cost $2,750, with inflation that equals to $25,000 today, the average price of a new car today is $40,000. Some things, like home electronics and appliances, you can buy cheaper today than inflation would factor in, but you also get a much shorter life expectancy, appliances for example lasted an average of 30 years in the 60's, now we're looking at 12 years. And with electronics you are not getting the quality of the sound you used to get, not to mention the lack of long life we once enjoyed, if you want a really good system you have to fork over some serious cash.

While computers have indeed fallen sharply in price from the late 80's, that's due to more robots assembling the majority of the computers today, and the cost to make microprocessors etc has fallen sharply as well as a result of that.

Since this is a cycling forum let's examine that. A 1983 Trek 760, their top of the line racing bike, cost $808 including top of the line components; now to get a top of the line Trek, with mechanical shifting to keep them similar, the Madone SL6 will cost you $4,729, but with inflation we should only be paying $2,332 for that bike, and the SL6 is using Ultegra, not the top of line DA components for a comparison against top of the line Suntour Superbe the Trek 760 came with. Today's bikes are not handmade like they used to be either.

Some innovations have indeed been good and caused prices to fall in relation to inflation, but some have not caused prices to fall and in fact have caused prices to rise well above what the inflation rate should be, while at the same time getting inferior product life most of the time from what we use to get.

Sy Reene

One difference I think between computers and bikes though. A computer today in dollars costs about 1/3 as much as an IBM PC from the 80s. And that's before inflation adjustment. Sometimes marketing and engineering complement each other for a manufacturer win. I'd wager a CF frame costs less to make than a welded steel frame, and a Di2 drivetrain may cost less than the engineering going into the mechanical shifting group.

Rolla

I don't know if anything is (or ever will be) settled, but upon learning about wireless dropper posts from a guy at the shop, I immediately saw the advantages and made plans to get one.

tkamd73 

I can get some pretty good use out of a 1995 bike, not much use for a computer with windows 95. However, still using a Windows 98 computer as basis for lap timing, on a large slot car track.
Tim

wolfchild

I am still using all of my bikes which I purchased around 2007-2008 and have no desire to upgrade to the so-called modern standards....Why the heck should I get rid of perfectly good and functional bikes just to keep up with modern trends ??

Rolla

No one is advocating that you do anything, but it's so predictable that you phrase your response as a pair of false dichotomies.

livedarklions

Going back to the cars, the mid-60s car was something you expected to replace every 3-5 years, and 100k miles would be considered a very high mileage vehicle. Today's cars are expected to last roughly twice that, are clearly much safer, and are a lot cleaner.

That top of the line 1983 Trek probably had downtube friction shifting, brakes that were much worse than bottom of the line now, and a lot of other components that would be the bottom of the line in today's market. You could probably get something rather similar in quality these days for about the same price in today's money. Tourney is probably as good or better than the shifters/derailleurs on the 1983 Trek.

Yes, there are higher prices at the high end of the range in today's vehicles, but technically , the bottom end of the lines of today's bikes and cars are fairly comparable or better and cheaper than the top end was in the eras you're making the comparison to.

seypat

Certainly true of the industry I'm in. "Professional Grade" now means it'll last 1-2 years of professional use before it needs to be replaced.

rekmeyata

The car thing you wrote is a falsehood brought on by inexperience with older cars and marketing, once you understand why cars lasted like they did back then, and I know, I was driving back then...in the 70's anyways, but dealt with a lot of cars from the 60's as well.

So why did the cars last 100,000 miles? Actually, they mostly lasted longer, depending on the engine. Almost all Chrysler engines lasted will over 150,000 miles, some Fords and GM cars did as well, and these were more complicated V8 designs, when you look at any manufacture line of straight 6's they could easily exceed 500,000 miles, my dad's Ford straight 6 got just shy of a million miles before he died.

But the reason why engines didn't last as long typically anyways, is that back in those days they only had 2 and 3 speed automatics, and either 3 or 4 speed manuals, what that means is that the typical car back then when running down the highway at 65 it was turning at least TWICE as many RPM's as a modern car and that was with 4 speed manuals, the other speed transmissions made the running rpm higher, this means that a car lasting 100,000 miles was actually putting on at least 200,000 miles internally as would be typical of a car today. I knew of 2 speed autos that ran between 3,000 to 3,400 RPM's on the highway, that's nearly 3 times as many RPM's of a modern car.

The other factor was lead in fuel, lead was bad stuff, but it was all they had that could lubricate the fuel system. Lead gummed up everything, so it was necessary to use carb cleaners about every 12,000 miles...or when you did a tune up, if you let the carb get too dirty too long then you had to rebuild the carb. Tune up brings up another subject, sparkplugs didn't last long, mostly because of the lead again, when the lead was removed sparkplugs saw about 50,000 miles, about 1/2 of what they last today but that was due to low voltage ignition systems and only having copper plugs.

The other thing was the points needed to be changed as well every 12,000 miles or so, again it was a primitive system but it worked and it was cheap and easy to replace, once Pertronix electronic points came along, which I used, I never again had to replace or adjust the dwell.

But that left the distributor timing adjustment, well those didn't go out that often, but again it was very easy to check.

Most people did their own tune-ups as I did, it would take about 45 minutes if I took my time, if I was in a hurry about 20 minutes, and the cost for the parts was very cheap back then, around $15 to $24 for everything needed before the Pertronix came along.

Today's tune-ups can run $400 on average, do the math, it would take 8 tune-ups during a 100,000 mile period, that's only $200 back then which is about $400 today, so it's roughly the same, though some modern cars can cost upwards of $800 for a tune-up.

Almost all performance engines were quite heavy duty, my Dodge 440 magnum lasted 150,000 some odd miles of very hard driving, I was racing it a lot, but that's when I sold the car, it was bought by two friends of mine, the last friend had over 240,000 miles on the clock, and all of us trashed that car, the 3rd person that bought it crashed it at around 150 mph and died in it, we didn't know that 3rd person.

Now the 50's cars on back did have a lot of issues, but there were a few engines that were actually good, but for the most part 3 to 5 years with 75,000 miles was considered a high mileage car, one you should not be buying. But new cars back then were actually cheaper, even with inflation figured in, back in the mid 60's a car cost an average of $24,000 in today's money, average car today is $40,000, and people had no problem with 2 and 3 year loans, today they have to do 5 to 7 year loans; that tells you that our money system has changed over the years to something worse.

The other thing about older cars was that it was nothing to fix almost anything on the car with a few basic hand tools, heck the tools were so limited in scope you could easily carry them in your car and fix anything on the side of the road. You are right about crash worthiness though, the old cars didn't fare well in crashes, and for a while they didn't even have seatbelts! then seat belts came along which didn't help a lot till shoulder restraints came along, but cars back then did not have crush zones like todays cars; but I have no fear in driving an older car today.

Now on to bikes, first of all, brakes were not worse than bottom of the line brakes modern brakes! some were, but most were not. Suntour Supebe for example can stop just as fast as modern 105 rim brakes. In fact, braking is all about the tire adhesion to the pavement, only the cheapest brakes would flex so much, not unlike Walmart bikes today, that would screw with your braking performance, but once you got into the mid to high level brakes, they were very good.

There is nothing wrong with down tube friction shifting, if done correctly they will shift just as fast as any modern shifter excluding electric, and they were very easy to maintain, in fact very little ever went wrong with them, and if they did break they were cheap to replace unliked briftors, but usually when a down tube shifter failed it was a simple washer replacement. And the older components of the mid to high end category would last a lot longer than today's stuff; my Trek 660 with Superbe stuff has over 150,000 miles on it.

Sorry if I disagree with you, I know how angry that can make some folks, but I would rather have a simpler system that is easy to fix that will last a lot longer...but that's just me.

Point

The improvements in cars are, in my opinion, easily quantifiable. In 1984, a wall equipped smaller sedan had an MSRP of $9000 - $10,000, With that you had maybe 100 hp if lucky, an in most, AM/FM cassette, with around 25 mpg on the highway. That 1984 price now equates to $27,000 - $30,000 after inflation. A sedan now in the $30k range has 180+ hp from usually a 2.5 liter engine (more than a 5.7 liter Corvette in the mid ‘70s), maybe AWD, Bluetooth, etc, and can get 30+ mpg highway. So really measurable improvements. Computers are another area of easily quantifiable performance improvements.

Going to the 1983 Trek, yes it did have downtube friction shifters, but I wouldn’t say they were worse than Tourney. The old Sun Tour stuff was very good. Brakes, while I like modern dual pivots, weren’t that bad years ago for the better stuff like the Superbe Pros that were on the Trek. Again, my opinion, but many of the “improvements” in cycling cannot be quantified as improving performance and many new components are worse than the older stuff.

Rolla

While I love downtube friction shifters, no matter how reliable, repairable, and inexpensive they are, the rider still has to take his or her hands from the bars to shift, to the detriment of safety, efficiency, accuracy, and comfort. The development of "briftors" was never solely about shifting performance.

livedarklions

Last part first, no we can disagree and we'll each make our buying decisions accordingly. I'm just saying you can't do a fair bang for the buck comparison between eras by just looking at the costs of the most expensive vehicles without also looking at the specs and seeing where the top of the line in the older era would fall in today's era.

I grew up in Minnesota during that era, cars never made it past 100,000 miles. If the engine didn't blow, they generally rusted out. Yes, some people did their own work, but I believe if you check, there were a lot more car mechanics in those days because cars were, by far, a lot more high-maintenance in those days. I totally don't understand how being able to produce greater hp at much lower RPM is not objectively superior, and that's something today's low-end cars can do and the high-end vehicles of the 1960s could not. And those safety features save many thousands of lives per year. The number of people killed on the road every year was higher then, and that's with a much smaller population driving many fewer miles.

I didn't realize how much I didn't like downtube shifting until there was a reasonable alternative for a drop bar. And I was very adept at shifting with friction shifters. Getting the rear shift right could never be quite as fast as index, but it was close enough. Mostly, though, it took more thought. And shifting while climbing was iffy at best. There's a reason no one is marketing downtube friction shifting, the newer stuff is just much easier to use.

Again, this is going to come down to personal tastes. I like '90s brifter bikes, largely because of the esthetics. That doesn't mean that I think all technical innovation since then is just marketing gimmickry, it's just that I value some other stuff more.

wolfchild

Cars and bicycles last a lot longer than 1-2 years and there is no reason to replace them that often.

Rolla

Aren't we lucky to have you around to tell us when it's okay for us to replace the things we own.

seypat

Did I say I was in the car or bike industry? I don't think so. I do buy GM 3500 work vans, however. They're a far superior product to Ford or Dodge full size vans.

livedarklions

Do they really need to be replaced that quickly or are you exaggerating? Honest question, I'm just surprised by that figure and am curious as to what starts to break down that fast.

Thessalos

I like the full internal cable routing and disc brakes on a bicycle...
I like also the top tube to have a little sloping geometry but not to much as the mountain bikes... There is no reason for the last one, just for aesthetic reasons!