Olof Stroh gave a nice example of a bike whose day (I think we agree) has passed:
<snip> I have a mid-priced Dutch sports tourer from 1979, first class paint, chromed ends, plain but nice lugs, Campagnolo fork ends, braze-ons. Looks nice and rides nice. Well executed, not over-worked or pretentious, but built by someone with a sense for classical design, good workmanship and good taste. It has Hi-Ten tubes.
Such a bike had a market in Europe twenty years ago (not now I´m afraid), but would probably been impossible to sell in US. For psychological reasons maybe, but you could also express it thus that a segment of the market was missing. ===========
I think there may be a couple of other factors involved, too, so I will speculate. First, there was a long history in Europe of craft-building, whether bicycles, furniture, or who-knows-what, one that seems to have persisted to a greater or lesser extent well after the destruction of WW II. In addition, the (material) standard of living was lower than in the US for several decades after the War. Under these circumstances, materials cost relatively more, and labor relatively less: it was easier to differentiate value through visible workmanship than upgraded tubing. I may be overstating it, but perhaps an extreme example will be illustrative: when we travelled in Peru a couple of decades ago, on a tight budget, we learned to buy silver "stuff" instead of gold. The workmanship was just a beautiful, but since labor carried such low value there, we could buy much more craftsmanship in silver than in gold. Clearly, this is much exaggerated relative to Europe, but the kernel has seemed to explain some of the things I've seen in Italian bikes in particular from the 60s.
harvey "building a castle of pure theory" sachs mcLean va