I was surprised twice, the first time when I learned 27" and 700c were different sizes, the second when I found you could still get decent tires in the obsolete size. But it makes sense, the 27" size was used to the exclusion of nearly all else on good road bikes, of which they made millions in the early 1970's and many into the 80's; so there will still be a market for service parts. What doesn't make sense to me is that they changed it for something arbitrarily slightly different but functionally the same. Can you imagine being a bike shop owner and carrying two sizes of nearly the same thing, or having to tell the guy the very nice bike he bought in '87 won't take the best tires available in '92?