Originally Posted by
Facanh
Sorry but I find vintage road bars simply unbearable. Those tiny brake levers compared with the deep bends are just so unbelievably uncomfortable for me. I also really like a nice fat top. So if I had to build a comfortable drop bar bike using the 25.4-26mm standard I simply couldn't do it.
Other than liking the look of quill stems, I don't see a reason why anyone would go with the old standard. If you're building a modern bike it's a no brainer to go 31.8mm, the selection is so much bigger, because like it or not that has been the new standard for a few years now, and not just on carbon race bikes... Accept it or not, 25.4mm and 26mm is pretty much dead. Only the niche vintage and some low end stuff is what keeps it sort of alive. Even discussing the pros and cons is sort of pointless...
If you find it pointless, don't do it.
There really is a point for some of us though, and that is to try to tease out possible reasons why things change. Pros and cons is what it's all about. It's easy to toss out pat answers like "stiffer=better" and "marketing" and "corporate conspiracy" or what have you. But IMO simplicity and reality have an inversely proportional relationship.
There are lots of reasons for why standards or dimensions come and go, and they all have to do with market forces. Which are not the same as marketing. Sometimes new technology actually does provide an unqualified improvement over old. On bikes, however, this is rarely the case, because of the level of refinement. Genuine improvements are marginally smaller and smaller, and cost marginally more and more. Maybe your new bike is "better" than a bike from ten years ago, but also costs twice as much, for a maybe 1% "improvement," depending on how you want to quantify that.
I prefer to consider it merely a desire for change that drives the market, not improvement. Newer, stiffer, lighter, more speeds, etc. are what people want. This is, of course, marketed as improvement, but it does not come easily without costs and compromises. Paying attention to those costs and compromises is the entire point.