> Unless one believes in conspiracy theories, it's reasonable to think > that there is a market Darwinism at work here- that most bike > purchasers feel more comfortable on bikes with around 60 mm trail, > and this has resulted in selection of those bikes in the marketplace > over low-trail bikes.
You do not need to resort to conspiracy theories to account for the design shift. The reality of the bike market is well over 70% of purchases are basically impulse. Someone gets a bee in their bonnet from a wide range of stimuli - Lance wins yet another exciting race, someone talking about a cool bike trip, a lifestyle coach says cycling is a good way to lose weight and expand ones horizon. That person goes to the bike store, gets a hard sale pitch from a person being paid on commission brings the bike home, rides it a few times, then puts it in storage until selling it on Craigs or eBay. Among the relatively small percentage of the ramaining riders, a signficant percentage are nuts about racing and will buy only what the pros are using. As you point out, that tends to be a high trail bike. Among those dedicated riders who do not race - or have a racing bike and a daily rider - there remains a good percentage who buy low trail. On Dec 31, 9:39 am, Tim McNamara <[email protected]> wrote: > On Dec 30, 2009, at 10:49 PM, PATRICK MOORE wrote: > > > On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 4:59 PM, james black <[email protected]> > > wrote: > > > On the other other hand, I think low-trail geometry is more than a > > trendy bandwagon, and is in fact actually superior. > > > Why is this, exactly? I know it is better for front loads, but > > apart from front loads, are there advantages? I ask because all > > three Rivs I have owned have handled impeccably; I can't think of > > any improvement to them. > > While I realize that Jan Heine has brought the high-vs-low trail to > the forefront in a very small section of the bike market- which is by > no means a bad thing- it's also of note that low trail bikes have > generally disappeared from the marketplace over the past 30 years. > Unless one believes in conspiracy theories, it's reasonable to think > that there is a market Darwinism at work here- that most bike > purchasers feel more comfortable on bikes with around 60 mm trail, > and this has resulted in selection of those bikes in the marketplace > over low-trail bikes. Road racers have used high-trail bikes for > decades (Eddy Merckx's De Rosa's had 58-60 mm trail, according the > Rebour's book). > > Jan's tastes lean very strongly towards low trail bikes. We tend to > think that the bike stuff we like is objectively superior to the bike > stuff we don't like. I think it's good that Jan has brought this > issue into the discussion about bikes, but I also think we need to > "try and see" these things for ourselves and see if they suit us. > > My favorite riding bike is a medium trail bike (about 55 mg trail) > with 26 x 1.25 tires (Riv A/R). My very-close-but-next-favorite > riding bike has 60mm trail and 700 x 25s (Ritchey road, which is the > best handling race bike I have ever ridden... but I don't race any > more and prefer riding on slightly fatter, comfier tires these days). -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
