Re: [CR]Model Years Start/End Dates

(Example: Production Builders:Frejus)

Date: Mon, 04 Mar 2002 17:24:01 -0800
To: Steve Freides <steve@fridayscomputer.com>, <Classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>
From: "Skip Echert" <skipechert@attbi.com>
Subject: Re: [CR]Model Years Start/End Dates
In-Reply-To: <3C8273F4.FA745725@fridayscomputer.com>


Hello Steve -

I have been wondering the same thing about bike model year: trying to make sense of frame brazing dates relative to brochure date for old Trek frames. (BTW - Trek has given me a list of serial numbers by brazing date for 1981 - 86 and the earlier 1976-80 SNs themselves apparently have month and year coded in.) I have asked a few people about bike model year, with no absolute answer.

Rumination - not to be confused with fact: One recurrent observation is that bike model year seems not to matter as much as for cars. There seems to be no consumer demand for a retailer to have and sell the next year's models in time for Christmas. Bikes from manufacturers are sold and shipped beginning early in the year. The majority of bikes are sold retail beginning in the spring and on into the summer. Calendar year seems to work - because winter is slow for retail, there need not be a crisp time distinction between last year and this year's models. There is no generally agreed upon date when the public can go see the next year's models at their LBS.

In your post you talk of dates of components. I assume these are years as defined by annual brochures and not by manufacturing dates? It would appear that component manufacturers had (have?) an annual cycle different from bike manufacturers, at least in the early eighties? One would think that the goal is to have bikes of a given year match up with components for that year? but perhaps not . . .

Sorry - no answers - only more questions.

cheers,

Skip Echert Renton, WA vintage-trek.com

At 11:05 AM 3/3/02, Steve Freides wrote:
>Could we generalize about model years in the bike world? Like cars,
>perhaps, sorta starts in September for the year that will start the
>following January?
>
>Whatever way it's been or not, has it more or less always been this way
>and is it still?
>
>I ask this because, so far as I can tell, a bike bought in December of
>1977 had 1978 Campy Super Record components on it, and that seems to be
>the way things work even now, at least to my fuzzy, not-in-the-bike-biz
>mind. Another bike I own built in 1981 had 1982 components on it.
>
>Corrections, amplifications, pontifications, etc., welcomed.

>

>-S-