Ugly modern bikes

[Woz]

I'll chip in. Having a bike that suits your own riding style and environment is key. I found something high-end retro - or very early 2000 to fit that bill perfect. Something I can get a good position on, versatile for most terrain I'll encounter, and above all will not fail despite weights being down to the 10 Kg mark. I usually mix and match modern with retro.

Recently I experienced riding a mid-level modern carbon Focus road bike. It felt like a crank that turned a pair of wheels with no spring or life. Most probably it was faster, but not as smooth or comfortable as I like.

A few days later, I hired out a modern Kona mid-level full suspension MTB. The MTB was ridden in a completely different I'm used to with more hilly steep climbs and rugged terrain - the position was a sod to get used to especially up hill, didn't feel nimble, and felt more like a tank that could just go over things and turn corners. Highly capable but in all honesty very little excitement for my rather low technical limits. Riding on the road with it can best be described as being on an oil tanker.

Each modern was simply too specific, where as my retro with a smattering of early 2000 parts and 1.9 tyres could have done both road and off-road tasks sufficiently well. Each in there own right didn't give a "wow" factor for me to rush out and buy any of them and above all they were ugly as sin and looked like dog's dinners.

 

[ibbz]

I'll chip in. Having a bike that suits your own riding style and environment is key. I found something high-end retro - or very early 2000 to fit that bill perfect. Something I can get a good position on, versatile for most terrain I'll encounter, and above all will not fail despite weights being down to the 10 Kg mark. I usually mix and match modern with retro.

Recently I experienced riding a mid-level modern carbon Focus road bike. It felt like a crank that turned a pair of wheels with no spring or life. Most probably it was faster, but not as smooth or comfortable as I like.

A few days later, I hired out a modern Kona mid-level full suspension MTB. The MTB was ridden in a completely different I'm used to with more hilly steep climbs and rugged terrain - the position was a sod to get used to especially up hill, didn't feel nimble, and felt more like a tank that could just go over things and turn corners. Highly capable but in all honesty very little excitement for my rather low technical limits. Riding on the road with it can best be described as being on an oil tanker.

Each modern was simply too specific, where as my retro with a smattering of early 2000 parts and 1.9 tyres could have done both road and off-road tasks sufficiently well. Each in there own right didn't give a "wow" factor for me to rush out and buy any of them and above all they were ugly as sin and looked like dog's dinners.

Very well put.
I'd imagine that GT illustrated above (2013 model) would be like driving a Tractor on-road.
And even off road - for really crazy mashed up terrain a full susser would be better suited.

But all in all, very true, bikes seem so specific and one dimensional.

 

[CAPIN]

i actually think 2013 look pretty good
Just 1 classic logo .
Although it has black/white contrast scheme its done somehow tastefully.
I also like smaller tripple triangle because of its sloping.
Ofcoure its 29er, so proportions differ..

 

[kingoffootball]

Theres so much to add to this - Its not about the bike - if you are fat, unfit and 40, 10 years of Audi driving and a fat bank balance isnt going to make that £8,000 trail centre bike go any better.

As for brakes - so many bikes with disconnected brakes because the owner cannot be bothered to get them serviced or learn how to do it themselves.

Discs? Ha! So many badly set up in the first place. One overspray of oil an they're fooked. One stuck Avid plastic piston, sorry, composite and they're fooked.

Broken frames, cracked frames, blown seals, tubless that refuse to seal due to a manufacturing fault. The lists go on and anyone from 20 years ago would say the same thing then.

Things were different 20 -25 years ago. Cycling was in the doldrums and all terrain bikes were genuinely new, exciting, frowned upon, feared and frightening all at the same time. It was a brave new world and these ugly fat tyred bikes embedded themselves into the subconscious.

Today, there is so little that is a genuinely new idea. Its just tweeks and revisions. 2009 bikes suddenly become unacceptable and ugly while 2013 off the holy grail of cycling to all.

Just ride what you ride - you'll be overtaken by somebody on something very old, or very cheap or very new. I'll overtake you or you'll overtake me. Just be aware that if you overtake me, I wont be muttering 'gosh, I must need a new bicycle to go like that' because I wont, I'll just need to eat less pies and ride more.

You're wrong.

Pies (like beer) are fuel, so you therefore need to eat more to go faster.

 

[Maxipedia]

I second that. I know fat peeps who are fast on bikes and "fit" ones who are plain wussies. Oh, and shouldn't we be honest? If your riding sucks, MAYBE it's not the bike's fault, old or new! It rarely is...

It's not a shame to be a bad rider, it's a shame not admitting it and blaming other things.

Mx

 

[RadNomad]

Remember the original post was about how modern bikes seem a bit ugly, not about whether they function better or not. So the topic is really about aesthetics, visual appeal.
OK, considering the well worn - and therefore probably true - adage that beauty is found in simplicity, i suggest the reason why modern bikes look less attractive is that they are more complex. It is the purity and elegance of uncomplicated design which looks so lovely. This is maybe why a Jaguar E-type looks better than a slash-gilled, carbon-lipped and multiple spoiler bedecked supercar - at least to me it does. Hi-fi looks better without swathes of knobs and lights and so on. Beauty will always be in the eye of the beholder but there's something wonderful about a design which does everything it needs to do without any superfluous baggage.

By the way on the subject of function, if i were to ride a very long way on a bike and needed ultimate reliability, i would choose the simplest [high quality] bike i could find - less likely to fail, easier to fix and higher probability of arriving at the destination.

 

[ibbz]

Remember the original post was about how modern bikes seem a bit ugly, not about whether they function better or not. So the topic is really about aesthetics, visual appeal.
OK, considering the well worn - and therefore probably true - adage that beauty is found in simplicity, i suggest the reason why modern bikes look less attractive is that they are more complex. It is the purity and elegance of uncomplicated design which looks so lovely. This is maybe why a Jaguar E-type looks better than a slash-gilled, carbon-lipped and multiple spoiler bedecked supercar - at least to me it does. Hi-fi looks better without swathes of knobs and lights and so on. Beauty will always be in the eye of the beholder but there's something wonderful about a design which does everything it needs to do without any superfluous baggage.

By the way on the subject of function, if i were to ride a very long way on a bike and needed ultimate reliability, i would choose the simplest [high quality] bike i could find - less likely to fail, easier to fix and higher probability of arriving at the destination.

Totally hit the nail on the head with this post. Thanks!
One thing people should take note of, folks on long distance on and off road tours ie. along the Karakoram Highway are always to be seen riding old Skool looking bikes. Mtb or road style.

 

[CAPIN]

Also agree. Its very dificult to make full suspension simple and clean looking. If you really investigate, most of times there is reason for particular shape and bend of the frame. Then if you add all those fork/shock remotes and dropper seat post cables.. its very crowded.

 

[shogun]

True I guess.
I appreciate a vintage bike, the more authentic the better (I am really not a fan of stuff with a modern fork or chainset or whatever bunged on) and thats 100% down to nostalgia; personally the bulk of vintage bikes I see are on computer screens so you can further boil that down to the aesthetic.

I just don't get why people feel they can't embrace the modern and appreciate the vintage?
I can't understand further that people always seem to feel a need to bolster their justification with utter bollocks about how somehow modern technology has made bikes less effective...and less reliable, what an absolute load of horsesh!t that chestnut is. Not to mention the old chuntering on about 'its the rider that counts'; bloody right, a gun rider will smoke most of us on equal equipment no matter whether its new or old, and probably absolutely pants you if they're on a modern rig and you're on a lovely period piece.

 

[legrandefromage]

I happily embraced all that was new, shiny and easily broken back in the dim and distant. I tried to re-embrace it all again about 5 years ago but I found I was going back to the dim and distant because after all the broken bits had been replaced with non braking bits, the dim and distant was better. Fast forward a few years and lots of fun bouncing around on just about any bike I could wish for (with a hefty staff discount to boot) I just couldnt find anything to put my money into.

Road, yes. Absolutely love all new road, have no problem with new whatsoever. Aesthetically pleasing and good looking componentry. Di2 - used it, seen in action for a rider with the use of one hand, brilliant. Thats what 'technology' means to me. Not some rejigged head tube angle for next years model making last years model redundant in the eyes of the magazine staff.

And thats what ticks me of the most. Cycling is available to anyone who can wobble along but the image being portrayed in the magazines is what I find difficult to understand - I find the motocross influence ugly - it gives the wrong impression to joe public. It makes us look as if we're tearing up the countryside for a bit of fun. Or out on a race everytime someone just happens to be in lycra for the ride home or just out.

'mountain biking' is a bit of tree hugging - its enjoying the trails and the country. From what I've seen lately its getting more aggressive - the trails are getting cut up by the full bouncers making it necessary to have a full bouncer just to be able to ride some sections in the first place.

Time and time again 20+ RB riders go out and theres barely a mechanical. Yet the we get guys roaring past on something new only for us to pass them 20 minutes later with them and their mates crowding around trying to fix something. We also get the riders that are just agog at what we're riding - some just find it hard to believe that a person will ride the same trails as them on something more than 5 years old.

There so much that has crept into cycling that was most likely never needed. But we're told that we do and thats what becomes the norm. The old goes out of fashion and is discounted as out of date. It gets removed form the everyday and forgotten. Sometimes it resurrected as a fad or hipster fashion. For some it never goes away but they become the luddites, the stubborn and the eccentric.

I think that the core of RB has turned it into a good general cycling forum, there is the new and the old mixing it up but some of us have now been around a while and seen things come and go. It will happen to the younger lot too and maybe one day you'll be bemoaning whats new and 'ugly'.