Originally Posted by
Wilfred Laurier
From a thread on brakes from a week ago:
My bike has an aluminum 'touring' frame, Mafac cantilever brakes (for now), drop handlebars, and bar-end shifters, and 700C X 25mm tires. Does that sound like a road bike to you? The implication from the above quote by someone else is that bikes with cantilever brakes are not 'proper' road bikes. Does this mean that the only bikes that are proper road bikes are road 'racing' bikes that have caliper brakes and a maximum tire width of 23mm?
BITD I thought that way - that a 'road bike' was a road racing bike. Touring bikes were a totally separate entity, and road-sport and older 10 speed bikes were just poor imitators. CX bikes were not at all common where I lived back then.
Are there certain characteristics that a bike must have to be called a 'road bike'? Drop handlebars? Then what about flat-bar road bikes? Skinny tires? Than what about road-sport bikes that can fit 32mm tires or older bikes with more clearance?
Just what does one mean when one refers to a 'road bike' in 2013?
IMO, the flat bar road bike, like the hybrid itself, is just a label. You could just as easily call them performance hybrids (to distinguish them from comfort hybrids, city bikes, or commuters). I suspect the reason the bike makers came out with the concept was, they thought consumers would pay more money for a "flat bar road bike" than they would for a "performance hybrid."