Originally Posted by
KonAaron Snake
We've had this discussion many, many times on here - usually about once a month. It's subjective...and the forum includes classic, not just vintage.
Common definitions of vintage are:
20 years old
25 years old
up through 1983 (C/R list definition) , when many changes happened at once
Classic means different things to different people - to me it means bikes that are especially beautiful, influential or desired. There are CF bikes I consider classic and most most vintage bikes aren't classic to me - they're just old. The bikes people like best here are usually the ones that are both classic AND vintage - like a 1970s De Rosa, or a Rene Herse.
One point implied by Kon's definitions is: Not everything old is classic. Much of it is just plain old, and not worth paying further attention to.
Even the criterion of "influential" is in the eye of the beholder. One could look at the earliest Ti frames which were arguably not made of the best alloy, as a pathfinder project that showed the industry the way to better technology, or as a dangerous travesty that should never have been released to the public. Is it classic, under both interpretations?