I'm not one of the haters, but I know Big S lost some good will when they sued Roubaix Cafe for using the name of a French city that they thought they owned.

I did a (possibly useless) A/B comparison between cheap tubulars and Turbo VS clinchers, the ones with cotton and kevlar threads in the casing. I raced a weekly series held at a local car-racing track, and alternated between my tubs and my Turbo wheels. Same course but a week apart. I couldn't tell any difference except under the hardest cornering, the Turbo felt a little more confidence-inspiring. You don't know whether a tire will slip until it does, and then you're likely to fall down. I never fell down, so I guess I never exceeded the cornering ability of either of the tires, but the cheap Vittorias I was using made a sound I didn't like when near the max G I could achieve on the tightest corner. It wasn't very tight, but there was a hill and the speed on one of the turns was reasonably high.

Anyway like I said this test is possibly useless, but it confirmed for me that the VS tire was good enough for me. I seldom had two dimes to rub together so I almost never had high-grade tubulars on my race bike. I have raced on silk Del Mondos, but never compared them directly to clinchers on the same course. Of course the only time I could afford top grade silks was when I pulled one out of the trash at the bike shop, when some well-heeled customer threw one away with plenty of life still in it, because he couldn't be bothered fixing a flat. I got a lot of tires that way!

Anyway, I don't know if there were any better tires at the time, but Turbo VS was pretty excellent. Just too narrow!

Mark B