Originally Posted by
custermustache
This makes me laugh, and as someone who dealt in "vintage" stuff for a long time, it's less true than you think. My wife once brought home a bunch of old spice tins from an estate sale. Nothing very old, just the McCormick stuff that most of our mothers bought - I wanted to toss them, but I'll be damned if those didn't sell like hotcakes. After that, we made sure to raid the spice cabinet of every estate sale we went to.
So if we go on to "classic" cars - I went to a classic car show the other day, and there was (I swear to God) a completely restored Gremlin.
I don't know that anyone ever desired a Gremlin - but it was the car that had the most admirers, as far as I could see. Classic?
Obvioulsy "classic" is in the eye of the beholder, and there is no accounting for taste, obviously.
My oldest thinks Gremlins are cool and here in the south there is a few still on the road. I roll my eyes when she says that. I am more of a GM guy and I have a convertable 1970 LeMans in my fleet and the wife wants a 71 Chevelle in the worst way. About the only Chrysler products I would consider would be Birds (Super and Road runner) Cuda, GTX and AMX...
Back to the GT.
We are getting close to the point where Brifter bikes are going to start being of a age appropriate to this forum. Early Brifrifters like RSX and 600 tri's ARE going to be a part of this forum more frequently very soon. There is already a thread here about upgrading older frames to them that is very popular thread. I like Brifters and my main commuters have them. They are wonderful in that they are in your hands and you can shift up or down while standing and powering a hill or away from a light. I feel more confident with them in heavy traffic when I don't have to take my hands off the bars. My casual Sunday riders, yeah I like the down tube or bar end shifters are fun but my daily drivers I will take the brifters over them any day.
There has been many referenced to this being more of a home for "Steel" but the fact is Manufactures like Klein and Cannondale have many bikes that are age appropriate here and there are more and more threads popping up dedicated to some of the Aluminum bikes. Honestly 2 years ago when I first joined it almost seems a sin to talk about aluminum bikes here and that has passed.
The Carbon bikes I think may be the breaking point and one of the biggest reasons is eventually they break and repairing them is not a option in many cases. The materail is weakend by scratches and UV. Manufactures are already putting age disclaimers on carbon forks and bars. I think they just wont stand the test of time because the materiel gets weak with age. I sure look forward to buying broken carbon bikes to strip the high end drive trains including brifters from them.
