Good Afternoon all.
This has been an interesting thread, but what has been missed are the changing times and public taste. Let me explain.
I was working part time in a couple of Northern Ca shops in the late 1980's and early 1990's, and buy this time road bike wheel sizes had divided up into two different groups. Better quality bikes were built around the 700c wheel size, and 27" had been downgraded to low end and department store bikes.
Then in the late 1980's the mass produced mountain bike came along, and this changed the hole business. The customers coming in for casual riding wanted MTB's, and while serous road riders still came in for there high end bikes, we were no longer selling the low end 27" bikes.
This change in public taste forced the business to change. Under these conditions it just didn't make sense to produce two different kinds of road bikes with almost identical wheel sizes. Since the majority of road bikes produced and sold were already 700c, the logical thing to do was close down the 27" production, and increase the 700c production. Hey even bikes have to change with the times.
Anyway there are still allot of high quality 700c bikes out there for us, so no complaints.
I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday
Tom Harriman
San Francisco, Ca
> Date: Fri, 25 Dec 2009 11:10:41 -0800
> From: freitas1@pacbell.net
> To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
> Subject: [CR] Long brakes,Short brakes and 700c...TIMELINE?
>
>
> This is an interesting question as a recent Ron Cooper
> came to me with 27'' wheels even though I figure the bike to be 1980. I
> had figured 27''s were obsolete by then specially with custom builders.
> Are there general dates we can attach to the swing away
> from 27'' wheels to 700c ? I know it might be different between European
> and Japanese/Asian makers.
> With the base line and midrange bikes, when did they or did
> they ever switch? I left the business in 1980 and 27'' were still common
> but since I slumbered for the rest of the 1980s I missed the transition
> if there was one.
>
> BOB FREITAS
> gloriously Sunny in MILL VALLEY, CA USA
>
> Best of Holidays to Everyone...............................