by Stendhal on Sat Aug 24, 2019 8:00 am
flying wrote: ↑Fri Aug 23, 2019 4:02 am
MontpierBike wrote: ↑Fri Aug 23, 2019 1:33 am
... and 35 years ago all the top quality racing frames kind of looked alike, so much so that the name on the downtube could be substituted for another.
I did not think they could be substituted for each other ......
We could easily tell a Bottecchia from a Colnago
We loved pouring over the bikes ....
Romingers Straight fork leg Colnagos, or Bianchis
PDM's Concorde, Pina's were works of art period.
Even Kelly on the Vitus or
TVT early carbon offerings so easily recognized...
Yes a bike with Ugo's last name may ride well if Cristiano is like his father & not just a businessman
The point is These dropped seat stay carbon cookie cutter bikes all look alike & lack any real fingerprint from the builder
These yes as you said could probably be passed off as each other by changing decals & that is kind of sad
All of the above just IMO of course but it is just my opinion there are still some nice bike frames being built
I agree there is a lot of convergence, but due to the UCI rules and probably engineering (and marketing ... Colnago, for example, has to have an aero bike in their product line to compete with other companies). I'd say there's actually
more variation and individual company pride today than compared to 35 years ago. MontpierBike is right; bike frames were so similar as between pro name brand companies that you couldn't be sure whether the company whose name was on the bike even made it. There was entire sub-sector of the industry in which custom frame builders such as Dario Pagoretti or Cyfac actually built the bikes with more established companies' logos. For example, Laurent Fignon's "Raleigh" was a Cyfac; Andy Hampsten's "Huffy" was made by John Slawta (Land Shark). If "Pinas" were works of art, many were Dario Pegoretti's art, not Giovanni Pinarello's art. When Ugo de Rosa was a master craftsman (he was), he didn't always put his company's name on the bike; per the DeRosa site, "in the Giro d'Italia '74 on a hundred riders, eighty ride on frames built by De Sosa (although not always marked with the heart)." When manufacturers started to differentiate their frames more by shaping carbon, this segment of the industry faded. Cyfac, Land Shark, Pegoretti (RIP), Sarto sell under their own names (although I'd bet that Sarto still makes bikes for other companies, smaller Italian ones though not the brands used on tour).
Cannondale Supersixevo 4 (7.05 kg)
Retired: Chapter2, Tarmac SWorks SL6, Orbea, Dogma F8\F10, LOW, Wilier, Ridley Noah, Cervelo R3\R5\S2\Aspero, Time Fluidity, Lapierre Pulsium, Cyfac, Felt, Klein, Cannondale pre-CAAD aluminum