Originally Posted by Jarrett2

You made a good point... in the wrong direction

Auto racing teams don't sell race cars to the public. In fact, I would be willing to bet that only a handful of car owners base their purchase decisions on the success of auto racing teams, if any. The marketing to consumers has nothing to do with race results.

The road bike industry is different. The whole carbon road bike line up is driven by racing. They build a bike for their pro racers to use, then turn around and market the same bike to the consumer saying this is a winning race bike. And people eat it up. Just look at the number of people in this thread that are non racers riding pro carbon road race bikes.

And those same companies turn around and post a blurb in subtext 39 of appendix B in the owner's manual about how carbon road bikes are built strictly for racing for in one or maybe two seasons, use light components that have a known shorter use life and weight limits that rarely see the light of day.

Most people don't read that stuff. They just want the fastest bike on the floor and expect it to be as durable as steel and last for years without issue. And they are surprised when its not that way for them.