so many types of drop bar bicycles now, want to join me in naming them all?

[bicycletricycle]

I thought this would be fun, naming all the new styles of drop bar bike categories, maybe keep it to multi speed because just about anything can be made single speed.

for a long time we had-
track
road
cross
touring
with a few super rare vintage randos and drop bar MTBs

Now we have an amazing array or drop bar bike styles with ever larger tires.

track
aero road
road
big tire road (is this a thing)
cx
gravel grinder
monstercross
drop bar 29er
rando
touring
front load specific bikes (delivery, porteur types)


Are there more? so many fun and interesting versions of this stuff coming from the custom builders, anyone have any favorites? Did I miss any ?

What is this? (other than a good time)

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4723/40561566651_a69a9b4c7a.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/24NhCC4)breismeister_nahbs2018-10 (https://flic.kr/p/24NhCC4) by bicycletricycle666 (https://www.flickr.com/photos/24583601@N08/), on Flickr

[4Rings6Stars]

Sport touring has been around for a while. Is that the same as all road / big tire road? Something like the Hampsten Strada Bianca

[bicycletricycle]

I think sport touring always seemed a bit nebulous to me. I think it started out as a road bike with brazeons, still kinda skinny tire. Does a sport touring bike need to take racks I wonder?

[Kontact]

Aren't aero road bikes a sub-type from the '70s?


I think it is easy to get all this stuff confused if we forget that "drop bars" evolved from bars that we'd call mustache bars now. Over time the bends became deeper and more vertical, and then sharper. But an old English racer type uses an early version of this bar type. And a similar process went the other way to become the ATB straight bar. So it is more of a continuum than a hard line in the sand.


Most of what is going on now is that the MTBs and Cross bikes kind of peaked in how different they could be, and are now cross-pollinating. On another forum someone posted the geometry charts of several 29'er and Gravel bikes to show that they were not actually much different.

[Mark McM]

I think sport touring always seemed a bit nebulous to me. I think it started out as a road bike with brazeons, still kinda skinny tire. Does a sport touring bike need to take racks I wonder?

Sport Touring was popular in the '70s - '90s. It was a Road bike that was a split between Racing and Touring. It's geometry was typically closer to Racing than to Touring, but as you say, it had fittings for practical things like racks and pumps and sometimes fenders.

There were also Randonneuring bikes, which largely fit the role of todays Endurance Road bikes. These had tighter geometries than bikes for loaded Touring, but were not as aggressive as Racing or Sport Touring bikes. And, of course, they had full brazeons for racks, fenders, pumps, and often also for lights.

The "bikes that only fit skinny tires" thing didn't really happen until the '90s. Before then, even racing bikes could take 28 mm tires, and other road bikes could take 32 mm tires and sometimes wider. But by the '90s, everybody had to have the same bike that Greg or Lance rode, so "racing" style bikes became the standard. Short reach brake calipers, which had only been used on true Racing bikes previous, then become the standard for all road bikes, and road bikes lost the ability to mount the larger tires they had been previously been able to accommodate.

Back in the '70s and '80s, the drop bar road bike categorization was something more like this:

Racing
Sport (or Sport Touring)
Randonneuring
Touring

Cyclocross bikes weren't really a thing yet. Since most bikes back then could fit larger tires, cyclocross racers typically just retrofit existing road bikes, either by starting with a Randonneuring bike that already had cantilever brakes, or having cantilever brakes brazed on to a bike with caliper brake mounts (virtually all bikes back then were steel).

[bicycletricycle]

your right, those AX parts and some aero tubes, I forgot about that. Shimano even made an aero shaped post I think.

I think that you re right about the 29er and CX bikes just sort of blurring. Bags, racks, fenders and other details still make a big utility difference though.

[eddief]

according to Orbea USA, coming to a shop near you in July:

https://www.orbea.com/gb-en/brands/gain-road/

then there's the Focus too:

https://www.focus-bikes.com/us_en/project-y-future-racing-bikes

[bicycletricycle]

I used to have a colnago mexico with cantis brazed on.

I wonder if this 20-30 years of super skinny only tire bikes will start to look strange in the future.

When i was young and got a raleigh professional mark IV and I was surprised about its clearance for 32's, it was the first time I enjoyed a race bike with cushy tires.




Sport Touring was popular in the '70s - '90s. It was a Road bike that was a split between Racing and Touring. It's geometry was typically closer to Racing than to Touring, but as you say, it had fittings for practical things like racks and pumps and sometimes fenders.

There were also Randonneuring bikes, which largely fit the role of todays Endurance Road bikes. These had tighter geometries than bikes for loaded Touring, but were not as aggressive as Racing or Sport Touring bikes. And, of course, they had full brazeons for racks, fenders, pumps, and often also for lights.

The "bikes that only fit skinny tires" thing didn't really happen until the '90s. Before then, even racing bikes could take 28 mm tires, and other road bikes could take 32 mm tires and sometimes wider. But by the '90s, everybody had to have the same bike that Greg or Lance rode, so "racing" style bikes became the standard. Short reach brake calipers, which had only been used on true Racing bikes previous, then become the standard for all road bikes, and road bikes lost the ability to mount the larger tires they had been previously been able to accommodate.

Back in the '70s and '80s, the drop bar road bike categorization was something more like this:

Racing
Sport (or Sport Touring)
Randonneuring
Touring

Cyclocross bikes weren't really a thing yet. Since most bikes back then could fit larger tires, cyclocross racers typically just retrofit existing road bikes, either by starting with a Randonneuring bike that already had cantilever brakes, or having cantilever brakes brazed on to a bike with caliper brake mounts (virtually all bikes back then were steel).

[David Tollefson]

ITU (draft-legal) triathlon bike... Ever so slightly different than an aero road bike.

[bicycletricycle]

ITU (draft-legal) triathlon bike... Ever so slightly different than an aero road bike.

are they different? who makes cool ones?

[Kontact]

The "bikes that only fit skinny tires" thing didn't really happen until the '90s. Before then, even racing bikes could take 28 mm tires, and other road bikes could take 32 mm tires and sometimes wider. But by the '90s, everybody had to have the same bike that Greg or Lance rode, so "racing" style bikes became the standard. Short reach brake calipers, which had only been used on true Racing bikes previous, then become the standard for all road bikes, and road bikes lost the ability to mount the larger tires they had been previously been able to accommodate.

Back in the '70s and '80s, the drop bar road bike categorization was something more like this:

Racing
Sport (or Sport Touring)
Randonneuring
Touring

Cyclocross bikes weren't really a thing yet. Since most bikes back then could fit larger tires, cyclocross racers typically just retrofit existing road bikes, either by starting with a Randonneuring bike that already had cantilever brakes, or having cantilever brakes brazed on to a bike with caliper brake mounts (virtually all bikes back then were steel).

I don't buy any of that. I nearly bought a purpose-built cyclocross bike in the '80s, and the shortest chainstays commonly found on racing bikes was also during the '80s. Tires were limited by first short reach brakes, and those go back to the late '70s - I don't think frame makers were purposely making their fork crowns and brake bridges to restrict larger tires - its just that no one cared about tires larger than 23c at that time. Yet plenty of late '80s and '90s road bikes would easily fit 25 and 28c tires anyway.

1985:
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4026/4247006379_6002575d13.jpg

[Mark McM]

Aren't aero road bikes a sub-type from the '70s?

Various aerodynamic frames and components had been being used since at least the 1920's, including disk wheels and fairings. But early racing equipment rules were implemented to quash the use of aerodynamic bikes, so aerodynamics lost prominence during the so called "golden age". But as you say, aerodynamics started being considered again in the '70s, and then accelerated with the rise in popularity of Triathlon in the '80s and '90s.


I think it is easy to get all this stuff confused if we forget that "drop bars" evolved from bars that we'd call mustache bars now. Over time the bends became deeper and more vertical, and then sharper. But an old English racer type uses an early version of this bar type. And a similar process went the other way to become the ATB straight bar. So it is more of a continuum than a hard line in the sand.

That's true, but even as early as 1900 the drop handlebar had already evolved into the shape we recognize today, as this 1901 photo of racing legend Major Taylor illustrates:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f8/Btv1b84333426-p073-2.jpg/800px-Btv1b84333426-p073-2.jpg

[Kontact]

That's true, but even as early as 1900 the drop handlebar had already evolved into the shape we recognize today, as this 1901 photo of racing legend Major Taylor illustrates:


Kinda. No one uses bars even vaguely like those. The closests are some track bars.

The point I was making is that "drop bars" are used on just about every kind of bike at various points in history. WTB drop bars with barcons was the hotness for MTBs by 1990. The XO-1 mustache was set up like a shallow drop bar at the same time. What we could call a drop bar ebbs and flows with bike types over the last century.

[Mark McM]

I don't buy any of that. I nearly bought a purpose-built cyclocross bike in the '80s, and the shortest chainstays commonly found on racing bikes was also during the '80s. Tires were limited by first short reach brakes, and those go back to the late '70s - I don't think frame makers were purposely making their fork crowns and brake bridges to restrict larger tires - its just that no one cared about tires larger than 23c at that time. Yet plenty of late '80s and '90s road bikes would easily fit 25 and 28c tires anyway.

No doubt that there were purpose built cyclocross bikes in Europe at that time, but very few made it stateside until the '90s, as cyclocross took a while to make it across the pond.

Those ultra-short chainstay bikes were mostly a fad for a few years in the late '80s/early '90s, and quick died out. As you say, there were a number of bikes with forks/rear triangles that were purposely made tight and could only fit narrow tires (and for which short reach brakes were originally made), but these were only sold in small numbers. The vast majority of bikes sold in the '70s and '80s of the Sport Touring and Randonneur variety (remember, the late '70s was the time of the 2nd Bike Boom), and were made with larger clearances, and typically used medium reach brakes.

[Anarchist]

Back to the OP...

It’s a bicycle.

[Kontact]

No doubt that there were purpose built cyclocross bikes in Europe at that time, but very few made it stateside until the '90s, as cyclocross took a while to make it across the pond.

Those ultra-short chainstay bikes were mostly a fad for a few years in the late '80s/early '90s, and quick died out. As you say, there were a number of bikes with forks/rear triangles that were purposely made tight and could only fit narrow tires (and for which short reach brakes were originally made), but these were only sold in small numbers. The vast majority of bikes sold in the '70s and '80s of the Sport Touring and Randonneur variety (remember, the late '70s was the time of the 2nd Bike Boom), and were made with larger clearances, and typically used medium reach brakes.

If you want to talk raw numbers, the majority of bikes sold in the '80s were BMX bikes from KMart.

But bikes built to accept racing bike parts - Nuovo Record, 600, Cyclone, Spidel, etc had short reach brakes and pretty much the same geometry we see now since at least 1980. The crazy short chainstays were largely in the mid-80s with crit bikes, and everything after that was 399 minimum chainstay length or longer, and it has been that way until Cervelo finally dumped their 399 stays 6 years ago.


People frequently make statements like "bikes back then were _____" and "Lemonds have long top tubes", yet every time I look at the old catalogs for the geometry charts, none of the common claims I hear are validated. Most road race style bikes today have handling geometry pretty much like you would find on a '79 Miyata, Vitus or Raleigh. And some popular bikes made very recently, like 2014 Cervelos, wouldn't accept 25c tires, even though Cervelo was blogging about how fast 25c tires are.


You are right that cross bikes were relatively rare in the US in the '80s, because there weren't many cross races. But they were being made in the US and Europe, and if you wanted one you could buy one - which is good because the sport-touring bikes couldn't be used for cross because they had medium reach calipers and 27" wheels.

[Mark McM]

ITU (draft-legal) triathlon bike... Ever so slightly different than an aero road bike.

I hadn't really paid much attention to draft-legal triathlons until I saw the 2016 Rio Olympics Triathlon. I had kind of expected to see them all riding aero road bikes decked out with as many aero components as was legal. But instead, they were largely riding the same bikes you'd see in any road race - and in fact, I've seen far more aero bikes used in many UCI mass start races. Many of the bikes didn't look much different than I see most non-racers ride.

It's possible that many draft legal triathlons don't consider aero road bikes important, because tactically the bike leg isn't nearly as significant as the other two legs of the race. (Just like in road racing, drafting balance out the differences between racers.)