In the 80s, all of my rider friends switched to 700c rims, simply because the Japanese and French rims stayed true much longer than their American counterparts. You still had to true your rims all the damn time, but the foreign aluminum rims lasted a lot longer than the mostly steel ones made in the U.S.
The same goes for cotter-pin cranks and the associated bottom brackets with sleeved bearings. They made really good cotter-pin cranks too, but most were junk. And the sleeved bearings in those bottom brackets were constantly needing to be re-packed with grease, having the bearings replaced entirely, etc. Both were killed off by campy and Japanese campy knock-offs with the square taper crank design, and bottom brackets that used a cone bearing set up.
That is how it was where I lived, anyway. Cycling was not that big there, so I'm sure there was more to it on a national/global level.