All vintage bikes look old? Have you seen some of the bikes that have been posted here? Most of us here are of the opinion that older bikes look "right" and don't care for the newer stuff. Spend some time reading the posts here and you will learn a lot. There is no formula for a good bike, different people have different criteria. If there is any advice I can give, it would be to buy a mid 1980's, Japanese, steel framed bike from a major manufacturer (research them yourself). The quality of those bikes was pretty good across the board.