You know the '80's were, like, totally, about big hair and leg warmers. Yeah, totally. And neon. Neon, totally. The '80's were just awesome!
All right. I didn't talk like that in the '80's. Even though I was, like, young enough.
That is the '80's everybody seems to remember. Or, at least, that's the stereotype of the decade. You had to love it, though. In what other decade could The Cosby Show and Miami Vice have made their debuts during the same week?
Those '80's really began, I think, around 1984. Before then, during the early part of the decade, the '70's were hanging on: Men were wearing ridiculous moustaches and even more ridiculous sport coats and ties, and young women could be seen in butterscotch-colored leather jackets and boots. But leisure suits were gone--thankfully!--along with men getting perms.
And--something else for which I'm thankful--some very, very tasteful and functional bikes were being made. In 1983, while I was working at Highland Park Cyclery (before I embarked on life as a New York City messenger), it seemed that every bike manufacturer--at least the ones whose bikes I assembled and we sold--offered at least one model in charcoal gray with red highlights--whether the decals or transfers, head tube, seat tube panels or bands, or some combination thereof. The red really was a highlight: It accented the understated nature of the gray finish rather than called attention to itself, as the red-white-and-black blocks and and bands on every other new bike sold today seem to do.
That year, I assembled bikes from Panasonic, Motobecane, Trek, Miyata, Peugeot and Ross--the latter's "Signature" series as well as their cheaper bikes. I saw red and gray in every one of those brands' gray bikes. But I didn't get tired of it: Those bikes all seemed tastefully finished, especially this one:
The 1983 Miyata 310 was--is-- a very nice bike. I think they, along with Panasonic, made some of the best mass-market bikes I've ever seen. Their lugwork was on par with all but the small builders. Their component choices always seemed to be made with function and value in mind: lower- and mid-priced alloy parts from Shimano, SunTour, Dia Compe, Sugino, KKT, MKS and the like. And, of course, SR Laprade seatposts.
It seemed that every bike and component maker had a product or line called "signature". I know, it was a marketing gimmick, but it was pretty inoffensive, I think, compared to some that I've seen since.
Shmano made derailleurs with the "arrow" you see. This version, as far as I know, was made only for the Miyata 310 and a couple of other manufacturers' models: The derailleur was usually finished in silver and the arrow was gold-toned. Shimano didn't call them "arrow"; they just had some boring numerical designation. Nobody--not even the Shimano sales rep who came to our shop--seemed to know what, if anything, the arrow meant.
Sarcasm aside, seeing the bike reminded me--in good ways--of what bikes used to be: nice lugged frames and components that had real functionality. Today you have to go to small builders like Mercian or Royal H to get new bikes like them.
I wish that Miyata weren't locked up behind a fence: I would've liked to have taken better photos. I hope that I still managed to give you a taste of what people could buy off a showroom floor in the moment before reason and taste vacated much of the bike industry.
Note: There's one thing I don't like about the 310: the shift levers. But they're forgivable on a bike that has so much else going for it!
The posts I wrote about Lyotard pedals and clipless pedal designs that have come and gone got me to thinking about a way in which the bicycle world has changed during my nearly four decades as a dedicated rider.
I first started to take longer rides and made some commitment to training during the later part of the '70's Bike Boom. At that time, about the only bike makers (at least, those with any pretentions of quality) most Americans heard of were Schwinn and Raleigh. As big as those companies were, to call either of them the General Motors of cycling would have been preposterous: Schwinn's sales peaked at 1.5 million bikes in 1974, about the same number of cars from just one division of GM--Oldsmobile--that were sold in the same year. And, of course, the sale of a car generates a far more revenue than the sale of a bike.
Other bicycle and component manufacturers--like Lyotard--were far smaller in scale. They usually made their products for local markets: Relatively few bike makers sold their wares much beyond the region, let alone the nation, in which they manufactured. Most, especially in Europe and Japan, were still owned and operated by members of the families that founded them. In fact, a few founders were still alive at that time.
What that meant was that most Americans had never heard of them. Perhaps even more to the point, it meant that even though there was a wide network of races, tours and other bike-related events, they were much smaller in terms of both participation and money than today's events. So, it didn't take as much money to sponsor a team or rider as it does (both in absolute and relative terms) today. Small and medium-sized bike companies as well as businesses in other industries (think of Molteni) could get in on the action.
It also meant that bike and component makers, like other small businesses, were risk-averse. What I didn't realize when I started riding was that the designs for most bikes and parts (one notable exception being SunTour derailleurs and shifters) available at that time were already decades old. Some actually worked well and were durable; if you used them, you learned to put up with their idiosyncracies or shortcomings. Then again, if you hadn't used anything else, you didn't think they were idiosyncracies and shortcomings.
Most of the Lyotard pedals were examples of what I'm talking about. Now, I don't think they were deficient, but I don't think Lyotard had come out with a new pedal design since World War II, or not much later. Even the Campagnolo Nuovo/Super Record parts were really just refinements of the Gran Sport products that made their first appearance during the early 1950's.
Around the mid-1980s, things started to change. It might be fair to say that the ground shifted with Tullio Campagnolo's death in 1983. His heirs discontinued the Nuovo and Super Record stuff Eddy Mercx, Bernard Hinault and others rode to victory. In their stead came C-Record (actually, Record-Corsa or Record-C) parts. Some, I'll admit, were quite lovely. But none of them was really a functional improvement over its predecessors; in fact, some parts, like the "Delta" brake, were clearly not as good.
Other companies started to "innovate"--or, more precisely, create new novelties. Designs became--or, at least looked--more and more radical every year. To be fair, some new designs had legitimate purposes, at least for certain riders. But too much of what was coming on the market every year was mere gadgetry: stuff for the sorts of people who felt they simply had to have the newest and latest in everything.
In other words, the world of cycling was shifting from one that was guided by cyclists and riding to one driven by consumers and the marketplace. That, in turn, turned the bike industry from a mosaic of relatively small companies to a pie cut into a few large slices by bigger companies. Smaller companies, which didn't have the money or other resources to devote to research and development (or, very often, didn't see the need for such things) simply couldn't compete. They, like SunTour and Lyotard, fell by the wayside or, like Sedis, Wolber and Super Champion, were absorbed by larger corporations, some of which had no previous involvement in the bicycle industry. Even Mavic was bought by Salomon, which in turn was taken over by Adidas. It could be argued that these turns of events enabled Mavic to develop the innovative (There's that word again!) rims and wheels that allowed it to retain its leading role in the 1990s and well into the 2000s.
Part of the pressure to create new things (or simply repackage old ones) also came from the ways in which the world of cycling events was changing during the 1980's. By the time Greg LeMond won his first Tour de France, companies like Molteni (or mid-sized bicycle makers) were no longer sponsoring teams. Corporations with much larger budgets were taking that on, and race sponsors included the likes of Coca-Cola and Nike.
Naturally, when companies put up money for riders and teams, they want a return on their investment. So, the stakes became higher. One benefit, at least for elite cyclists, was that the amount of prize money grew and the sport gained greater exposure outside of its traditional strongholds. A downside was that it became more difficult for teams and riders with little or no money to compete, and smaller races and rallies became even smaller or disappeared altogether.
So, while 90 percent of the 1970s peloton were riding Reynolds or Columbus-tubed frames with Campagnolo components--all of which had been developed decades earlier--riders by the late '80s were astride newly-developed (and far more expensive) bikes with never-before-seen frame configurations and aerodynamic components made from exotic materials.
It's easy to understand why racing-team sponsors would want their riders on the newest and most innovative equipment. A race that takes hours or days but won by seconds (or fractions thereof) could well be decided by those extra few grams off the wheels or a frame or other part that's more aerodynamic. And, as in any professional sport, there is really not as much difference as one might expect between the best and the rest of the peloton as there is between anyone who's in the peloton and anyone who isn't.
That point is lost on club riders with lots of money and vivid fantasies. They want to ride whatever's being ridden in the peloton. If they didn't have such equipment, they seem to believe, younger and better-conditioned riders will make them look like the out-of-shape and not-so-young riders they actually were. Of course, those young and poor riders either get better or get better equipment, and the riders with bigger wallets and stomachs (I should talk, right?) want "better" equipment.
And so the world and industry went from being, essentially, a village of mom-and-pop enterprises that responded to cyclists' needs to an economy increasingly dominated by corporations that profit from anxieties they create in consumers.
After reading some of my other posts, some might argue that the bike of which I'm going to write in this post is the best racing machine I ever owned or rode.
In future posts, I'll tell you why it wasn't--at least, not for me--and which bike was. Still, it was a great bike and I sold it to buy my next racing bike (Mondonico) only because I thought it might be a better fit.
If I do say myself, though, it's hard to deny that my Colnago Arabesque was pretty, or at least had an interesting style. If nothing else, it didn't look just like other Italian racing bikes of its time. Although it was essentially the same in geometry as the Colnago "Master", the Arabesque had a few nice touches the Master lacked:
Like my Mondonico, my Colnago Arabesque was constructed from Columbus SL tubing: the lightest available from the company at that time. Many other riders I knew, and rode against, at the time were convinced that bikes built from Columbus were stiffer than those made from Reynolds, Ishiwata, Tange or Vitus tubings. That may well have been true, but I found that bikes with short wheelbases constructed from Columbus SL tubing gave a harsh enough ride that I might not have ridden as fast as I might have on, say, a Reynolds 531 or 753 bike. (853 wasn't yet available).
Plus, I have to say that while the bike's workmanship and finish were pretty good, they weren't quite up to the standards one might expect from other top-flight bikes. Given that the Colnago was my first elite-level Italian bike, I was surprised at how easily the paint chipped.
Still, I must say that the Colnago Arabesque was a fast bike and its harshness was mitigated at least somewhat by the tubular (sew-up) tires I usually rode on them. Most high-pressure racing clinchers of the time rode harshly; tubulars were more resilient. I used one of Vittoria's less expensive models for training rides on Mavic GP4 rims; for races and other fast rides, I rode some nice French Wolber "Course" or Czech Barum tires on Mavic GEL 330 rims.
Now, given the criticisms I've made of this bike, I still can't say that it's not the reason I wasn't a better racer!
I sold it to a guy who called himself Joneszy. He was a bike mechanic who claimed that chrome-moly tubing was actually aluminum and called cogs "clogs". Still, he knew enough to know that the Arabesque was a good fit for him, as he had a longer torso than mine.
I didn't see him again. I didn't see the Arabesque for a few years until Tammy and I were walking along Flatbush Avenue near the Brooklyn Academy of Music. A middle-aged black man stopped for a traffic light; his bike caught my eye. Yes, it was my old Arabesque.
"You bought that from Joneszy, didn't you?"
"Yeah...How did you know?"
"I sold it to him."
Of course, he wanted to know how I knew it was the same bike. I pointed to a decal I placed on the downtube, just behind the head tube lug. The paint chipped there; the silver and black decal--which came with someone's Huret Success titanium derailleur--was at least tasteful, and just big enough to cover the chip.
What were the chances of anyone else having a Colnago Arabesque with a Huret Success decal in the exact same spot?
What if Salvador Dali were hired to design a bike frame--and he only did the top tube?
The result might look something like this:
I had never before seen such a frame sporting Bianchi logos. But now that I think of it, I'm not surprised. The Bianchi in the photo was made in Japan for Bianchi during the 1980's. Back then, the most famous Italian bicycle manufacturer was rebranding bikes built by Panasonic, Bridgestone and, it was rumoried, Miyata, for the US market.
When you look at this Panasonic closely, you realize why Bianchi made such a move. During the 1970's and early 1980's, Japanese makers like the ones I've mentioned, and Fuji and Nishiki, took over much of the entry- and mid-level market for road and touring bikes in the US. There were good reasons for that: The Japanese companies were offering better bikes for the money than most of their European and American rivals. Their quality control was more consistent: Highland Park Cyclery sold Miyata and Panasonic when I worked there, and I don't recall having to return one for a defect. On the other hand, I saw braze-ons break off a Peugeot and Treks that had miscut threads and wheels that didn't hold up for very long.
Perhaps the biggest "draw" of Japanese bikes was that their drivetrains usually shifted more accurately and (a major selling point with new cyclists) more easily than those on their European counterparts. The Panasonic in the second photo was the lowest-level ten-speed bike the company offered at the time, but its Shimano derailleur outshifted all but the very top models made in Europe at the time. The BIanchi is a few levels up from the Panasonic, and its Shimano gears were more accurate and less fussy, I would submit, than any others--except for the ones made by Sun Tour.
Of course, BIanchi would not be the only company to re-brand Japanese bikes for sale in the US. Some of the most famous examples of such bikes were the "Voyageur" and "LeTour" lines Schwinn sold; Raleigh, Peugeot and other companies would also offer bikes from the Land of the Rising Sun. Other companies, like Motobecane, would continue to make bikes in their home countries but equip them with Japanese derailleurs, freewheels and cranksets--and, later, other components--for American cyclists.
But not all of those companies offered bikes with the frame design of the BIanchi and Panasonic you see in this post. In fact, frames with top tubes so shaped were made for only a few years, or so it seemed. A couple of years ago, Trek revived a modified version of it on their "Belleville" city/porteur bike:
I have never ridden a bike with such a configuration, but I can see the benefit of it, particularly for cyclists with disproportionately short legs. I would think that people who, for other reasons, want a frame that offers more clearance than the traditional diamond design but don't want something more rigid or stable than a traditional women's, or even a mixte, frame would also like such a design.
Here's what I always wondered: If you buy one of those bikes, do you get a watch with it? Or a bike computer: Imagine if Salvador Dali designed those!
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