SNIP:---- "On the road, we've shaved 6 lbs, or 25% of the weight, from bikes at all levels of, the price curve"-----------
Perhaps this is true about the cheapest bikes, or entry level bikes that during the 70's sold for a smidgen over $100. If memory serves me in 1971 the average job for a fellow just starting out as an adult was about a smidge over $100... so a guy could buy a decent entry level bike with one weeks salary. (Maybe this is inherently just). Fast foward to 2005 where the average out of high school Joe will earn about $320 a week and from what I see for about $500 you can buy a half decent road machine with STI shifters. Now the $500 bike will be superior in many ways to the old Peugeout U08 in terms of weight and shifting ease. Just guessing: Peogeout U08: 27 lbs, and Beercan 18 speed STI bike: 21 lbs. So in this case 6 lbs or 25% off is just exactly right.
However in the category that most interests me, the mid level upscale raceable road bike this is not so true. Example; 21 lb road bikes were available in the 70's for three weeks salary ($400 -$500) but now for three weeks plus entry level salary you get a $1200 to $1500 Trek. In both cases you got an admiral machine. Back then, when bikes were weighed with pedals and typically weighed 21 pounds and were functional and reliable in every way. Now the $1300 or so Trek machine is weighed and quoted frequently without pedals but with pedals weighs about 19 pounds (from what I see, I might be a bit off but hopefully not by much). The modern Trek or Cannondale is also a fine machine but only weighs 2 pounds or 10% less than its classic counterpart not 25%. When I pick up one of these modern machines I can barely detect any weight difference with my arm, and when I ride it I can't detect any difference in weight at all....Nor can I detect any real improvement in acceleration or climbability or responsiveness. I would hope that for all the penalties in aesthetics and durability there would at least be that one major advantage, since if I recall weight was as much an obsession back in the 70's as it is today. But the reality is the modern bike in this affordable category weighs only a bit less, gives a real benefit in terms of number of speeds (also of interest back in the days of Nixon, Carter and Reagan), but offers less in so many other areas that to me they seem like a rip-off.
In conclusion in the area of mid to high price curve, road bikes are not delivering on promise of 25% weight loss. The seventies saw a practical weight minimum for a road bike at about 19 pounds and in 2005 a practical weight minimum I believe is something like 17 pounds. I am going to be honest here and say that I haven't even riden one classic Teledyne or Speedwell even when ones were offered to me last month and then again last year, and I haven't ridden even one Carbon Fiber Trek. To be honest I have little interest in the first and absolutely no interest in the second.
All this being said, I am sure that there are people on this list who will correct me on some or all of my numbers, and perhaps I deserve it, not being an expert in near minimum wage jobs (then or now), nor modern bikes in any flavor. Garth Libre in Miami Florida