It seems that the debate about wheel size won't ever go away. I'm not talking only about 650 vs. 700: I'm thinking about those sizes vs. 20 inch or smaller sizes.
There has always been a contagion of cyclists, bike designers and marketers who've maintained that smaller wheels are actually faster. Alex Moulton went so far as to "break" records with his bikes. (As it turned out, he rode against records that hadn't been challenged for years, or even decades.) Whatever you think of his bikes, recumbents or other small-wheeled bicycles, they do have loyal followings, particularly in Japan and a few other countries.
My experience with smaller-wheeled bikes (apart from what I rode early in my childhood) is limited to a couple of folding bikes. Perhaps I'll have the opportunity to ride others and, if I'm feeling ambitious, make a comparison with my own and other 700C bikes.
Or I could borrow this bike:
Paint your bikes green, call them "whites" and they'll sell like hotcakes all over the world.
Believe it or not, a company has actually been doing what I've just described.
I'm talking, of course, about Bianchi. Time was when a Bianchi was a Bianchi, and you couldn't buy them everywhere. They were available in a few countries outside Italy and in the US, a relatively small number of shops sold them. The Bianchis available outside Italy were almost all mid- to high-range road bikes, and they were all made in Italy.
Things started to change during the 1980's when Bianchi had some of their bicycles manufactured for them in Japan. As far as I know, those bikes were sold only in North America, and were--intentionally--much like the better Japanese bikes of that time from makers like Miyata, Panasonic and Bridgestone. Bianchi's finest racing machines were still made in Italy, but they apparently realized that in the less-expensive road bikes (I'm talking about the real ones, not the ones that mimicked their paint schemes), Japanese frames were offering arguably better workmanship and clearly better components, particularly in the drivetrains, than the Europeans were, or could.
That was the beginning of a major shift for Bianchi. Up to that time, you sought out a Bianchi if you were a racer or other high-mileage cyclist who cared at least somewhat about speed. And you knew that getting a Bianchi meant getting a particular kind of Italian road bike. If you weren't the type of cyclist I've just described, you had probably never heard about Bianchi at that time. But, from the 1980's onward, Bianchi became, in essence, a number of different bike-makers in a number of different countries. As an example, they marketed one of the first hybrid bikes in the US, where that type of bike first appeared. They also offered mass-market versions of high-performance mountain bikes made by the pioneer mountain bike builders in the US. Later, they would make and sell one of the first mass-market fixed-gear bikes--and helped to spawn, if unintentionally, the "hipster fixie." And they have sold various types of utility and recreational bicycles in other countries. Those bikes are tailored to the needs and tastes of the local markets.
I've never been to Japan. So, in all honesty, I couldn't tell you what cyclists ride there. All I know about the Japanese cycling community and markets, I've read in bike magazines or heard from people familiar with Japanese cycling. And, oh, yes, from seeing what the Japanese buy on e-Bay.
I never would have guessed that their tastes ran to bikes like these:
Martin, the owner of this bike, brought it and himself from Japan. He says it's a kind of bike the Japanese call the "mini-sprinter": a machine with a relatively tight wheelbase, straight fork and small wheels (on this bike, 20 X 1 1/8). He tells me that when people see it, they ask him how to fold it. I remarked that in some ways, the bike--which is called the Mini Velo 9 Drop--reminds me of the original Moultons.
According to Martin, Moultons are sought by collectors in Japan, where they fetch even higher prices than they do here in the US. And, he said, a lot of Japanese believe that it's possible to go faster with the smaller wheels.
I've always wanted to ride a Moulton just to experience it. If I had money to burn, I might buy one even though I'm not a collector. I'm sure that the ride of Martin's bike is different, however subtly. If I had more time, I might want to try both a Moulton and Martin's bike. I wonder which one I'd like better. In any event, I'm sure that the shifting and braking are better on the Bianchi than they were on the Moulton. My love of vintage (and vintage-style) bikes, bags and other accessories doesn't extend to components.
However, Martin does have two things on his bike that, if they weren't standard equipment on Moultons, were almost certainly installed on many of them. He has a nice brass Japanese bell like the ones Velo Orange sells. More important, he has a nice brown Brooks B-17 on his Bianchi.
