"Many" is an awesome word, but it does have that vague quality, doesn't it? In the mid-90s, some (many? A few? A preponderance? A small but significant minority? Several? Pick your favorite non-specific quantitative term) riders were still on bikes from the 80s or even the 70s, which had clearance for more rubber, horizontal top tubes, eyelets for fenders, quill stems, etc. My hunch is that many didn't actually take advantage of these features, but they did have them, and some riders stayed on those b/c beer-can treks and radically compact Giant road bikes didn't offer the comfort or versatility of their older steel bikes. There were so many bike-boom bikes still around (remember, this is before every bike with semi-horizontal dropouts was converted to a FG), that the drive to make those mid-90s abominations may have come from a need to distinguish the new bikes from the old ones.

I totally believe you that the big manufacturers and product designers at significant meetings did not care much about GP's philosophy, nor for the needs of crusty folks who would cling to their old bikes regardless. But, ppl on bikes did feel a need for more practical bikes, and GP was far from alone at the time. He may have simply been the "loudest" voice, at the time, advocating for the bikes that had recently gone off of the new-bike market.

But, yes, you're quite right that the folks who liked classic geometry and practical accoutrements were not a big enough market to register on anybody's sales strategy in the 90s....

(A 520 in 1995 was still a cool bike... When I went into a Trek dealer at the turn of the century asking for a 520, they treated me like I was a degenerate pr!ck just for asking. None on the floor, and the salesguy seemed to feel that he wouldn't wanna order one, even if I paid in advance....)

I don't think GP ever claimed to have "singlehandedly" done anything... i put the quotes around that term b/c bikeforums member TiHabanero claimed that GP "Singlehandedly he steered the bicycle manufacturers toward taller front ends, longer stays and more comfortable riding positions."

Sorry to clip your post up; I just wanted to truncate it in the interest of a slightly less cluttered thread. Short summary: GP made a huge contribution to the current state of the bike industry, but he didn't actually do anything innovative. In fact, he was just one of many ppl who lamented the shift from normal do-everything road bikes to the one-trick-pony race bikes that had dominated the market--- and still kinda do, today.