Mike Fabian wrote:
Bottom Line - after being around bikes for well over thirty years, I just don't believe in alleged national "traits" amongst bicycle design. I remember learning in college that myths and stereotypes are most useful for influencing and controlling the simplistic and ignorant.
I really enjoyed Mike's posting, while disagreeing a bit with some of his conclusions. There is a risk in labeling something as "myth" or "stereotype" of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, i.e., there is usually some truth behind a persistent myth or stereotype. I think college students can be as easily influenced and controlled through myth and stereotype as anyone else. Perhaps even more so, since they have to take in so much so quickly "on authority" from professors who usually have their own agendas.
I think that especially in the recent past, regional differences were an obvious reality in bicycle design. When I was a kid, we had big clunky heavy balloon tired American bikes, and later the "chopper" style, with high-rise handlebars and banana seats. Rarely one would see an "English Racer" with its skinny tires, straight tubing, hand brakes, and three-speed hub. The true European racing bike, the "Ten-speed", was even more exotic and unusual. Similarly in those days there were clear differences between American automobiles and imports, and further distinctions between British, Italian, French, and Japanese products. These distinctions may be blurred these days with greater communication and exchange of ideas, but they were quite real back then. Competition leads to imitation of the best, or at least the most popular, features. In the struggle for market share, everyone wants to be distinct from the competition, while at the same time not lacking any feature offered by the competition. Obviously, you can't have it both ways.
Much of this goes back to fashion, which is a weird concept, but real nevertheless. I mean, I don't understand how something can look so right in one decade and so stupid the next. Fashion is inherently regional. I find no difficulty at all in believing that designers and consumers in England, Italy, and France back in the classic era could each gravitate around their own ideas of what good bicycle design looked like and rode like, with the result being a definite style of bicycle peculiar to each culture. There are always exceptions, but it would take a lot to convince me that this persistent view is the result, not of real differences in style, but of some vast conspiracy aimed at influencing and controlling old guys on steel bikes.
John Hurley,
Also a bit tongue-in-cheek,
Austin, Texas, USA