Originally Posted by rustystrings61

The tire selection argument has always felt bogus to me. So long as Panaracer makes the Pasela, there is at least one good tire at least as good if not better than anything sold back during the heyday of 27-in wheels. There are a lot of tire widths I have no use for, tire colors that I would never use, and general marketing garbage I have learned to ignore. For non-competitive, non-extreme riding, 27 x 1 1/4 is an awesome tire size, especially with a decent tire. Ian Hibell rode all around the world on them, and so did many of the Rough Stuff Fellowship folks. It's a 32 mm wide tire that with a decently supple casing rolls very nicely.

I'm not entirely joking when I suggest that it's a tire size awaiting a 650B-esque renaissance. All that it needs is some marketing pizzazz and some coolio nickname. I propose The Dirty Six-Thirty, but I'm sure someone will come up with something equally inane when the time comes.

I understand the history - it was originally a Dunlop proprietary size built to compete with 700C, and while for many years it was THE performance wired-on tire in the Anglophone world, the whole globalization/standardization of 700C make the 622 more logical from a supply-chain perspective. On the other hand, there were millions and millions and MILLIONS of bikes sold with 27-in wheels, and someone is always going to market rubber and hopefully rims, because it's just too big a market to walk away from entirely.

My turning point came when I rode the Clunker Challenge a few years back on a '75 Motobecane Grand Touring with cheap IRC 27 x 1 1/4 tires at 70 psi to accommodate the vintage hookless rims. It was so smooth, and when I rode the same route the next day on a bike with 700 x 28s there was no appreciable difference in speed. I have been known to take advantage of the 27-inch-BAD fallacy - my full 531 Allegro was relatively cheap in part because the bike shop selling it assumed that 27-in wheels were entry level. They'd obviously never seen an early 70s Paramount.