Originally Posted by
AndyK
Also, the older frames had shorter top tubes than today's.
Depends on what you mean by older. It seemed to me that top tubes got short in the late 90's. Before that, they were about equal with the seat tube length and before that, they were super long.
Originally Posted by
reshp1
A bike with a taller head-tube/more "relaxed" geometry in a smaller size is effectively a shorter top-tube.
That's actually not a bad idea. The slacker seat tube will compliment the longer legs while keeping the reach short.