Originally Posted by
uncle uncle
To add to the original posters question, why did chromo become so available and affordable in the 1980's? It seems that chromo made inroads to a level of bicycles just a step above entry level. Was it just the competition between the various bicycle companies? Did it become the buzzword for the market at that time, something a novice bicycle purchaser would recognize as a "quality" product?
The mid-1980s inroad of chromium-molybdenum into the upper entry level market and lower mid-range market was made possible by the development of reliable welding techniques for tubing. Fabricating the tubes from a flat sheet that was then rolled and welded was far cheaper than drawing a butted, seamless tube. There was a huge inlux of seamed, butted, CrMo tubesets like Tange 900, 1000 and Infinity, Ishiwata's EXO series, Reynolds 501 and Columbus matrix/Cromor. It should be noted that Matrix/Cromor is not a traditional seamed tubeset, in that that it was cold drawn from a seamed blank, but it was cheaper than a seamless tube.
Edit: During the 1970s boom, seamed tubing was considered inferior and there were a number of reported failures. Consequently, high end bicycles used only seamless tubing. However, the reliability of the mid-1980s sets overcame this stigma. When True Temper came onto the scene, all their sets used seamed tubing.