I would say some of the most important items which led to the decline of classic bikes (in roughly the order of importance) were:
1) Shimano index shifting. This made derailleur bikes easier for the beginner, but led to the decline of the "manual bike", a decline Grant laments regularly in Rivendell Reader. Perhaps more significantly, it greatly decreased the ability to mix different brands of components on a single bike.
2) Gary Klein. He demonstrated that an aluminum frame can be made stiff as well as light by using larger diameter tubes. He also dispensed with lugs and TIG welded the frames, leading to the current dominant design of TIG welded oversized tube aluminum frames.
3) Lambert (don't laugh). Lambert showed the potential to make light and cheap steel frames by using TIG welding. This has now become the dominant technique for producing steel frames. If not for the unfortunate aluminum fork and the non-tapered BB, Lambert might be more widely recognized as a trendsetter.
4) Teledyne Titan (and Speedwell). These pioneered the use of space-age materials in bicycles, setting the trend for the most expensive current bikes. This helped create the current trend for the high end of the market, where exotic materials make frames twice as expensive to gain a tiny increase in actual performance.
5) Graftek. Like Teledyne and Speedwell for titanium, these popularized carbon fibre as a material for bicycle construction. Like titanium, this today adds great cost to top end bikes in exchange for a highly debatable amount of actual benefit. In some ways, the Graftek may be more significant as we have seen carbon fibre spread to numerous components as well as frames.
Oddly, the Lambert, Teledyne, Speedwell, and Graftek and perhaps even the first Kleins themselves qualify as "classics". It may even be that the first indexed Shimano derailleurs fall within the CR timeframe. All of these were important trendsetters, even though we now know that the trends they set in motion developed in ways that most of us on the list do not like.
Regards,
Jerry Moos
> Maybe this is opening old wounds, but, who are the top ten who marked the
> beginning of the end of the "Classic" era?
>
> Gary Klein? Aluminum welded frames
> Gary Fisher / Tom Ritchey Tig welded Mountain Bikes
> Cannondale?
> Trek?
> American Raleighs?
> Giant?
> Look?
> Litespeed, Merlin?
> Shimano?
>
> Just day dreaming. Have a great holiday season
>
> Brad Luecke