Originally Posted by Kotts
What they
now call a "mountain bike" range
used to be called a "touring" range, and was pretty common on road bikes that weren't strictly racing machines. When "mountain biking" became more popular than "bike touring" the nomenclature changed.
Well, sort of. Touring freewheels and cassettes never had an 11 or even 12T small cog. These are common on MTB cassettes because of the tiny "big" chainrings, typically 42 or 44T, so the 11 or 12t cogs are needed to get a reasonably high top gear.
Touring bikes in the past came with 14 or 13T small cogs and combined with a 52/42/granny triple crank gave a 100 or 108" high gear which is PLENTY for touring. Unfortunately current touring bikes usually come with MTB cassettes and road triple cranks. This gives a reasonably low low gear (30x32 or 30x34) but you also get an absurdly high high gear like 52x11.