On my new bike it came with 42. I got it via the net. I spec'd most everything including bars - the seller I guess just missed the bars. I can see my arms pointed inward and can feel some level of discomfort. I'll switch to 44 or ?? once I measure. But I know about bar width and to look for such things. A newbie's gonna think such hurtin' is natural and won't think about width of bars - they'll think all bars are the same.
And I don't know any shops around my town that stock bars in various sizes. You buy a stock bike you get what's on the bike and no one at LBS ever talks to you about anything other than frame size and getting seat height close.
I know Grant Peterson is an advocate of wider bars.
Originally Posted by
Minion1
I was talking about stock bikes. I worked in bike retail for 3 years and still moonlight, and if a customer knew what they wanted to swap we would figure out a deal. Bars are by no means a forgotten metric, nearly every shop I know of stocks a range of bars because people spend a lot of money to change bars to fit their preference.
Bars and crank dimenions are not top of the list when people new to cycling try to choose a bike, because they are unaware of the differences these components can make, and don't have experience to draw from. In that case, they rely on the expertise of the bike manufacturers to spec the bike with the components that will fit them, and that will work on a bike that size, hence the bell curve comment. On a 56cm bike, 97 per cent of people will be able to ride a 42cm bar with 172.5mm cranks. Q factor can be adjusted with road pedals so that isn't really a concern for most people.