Cannondale warrantied their frames for life from the get-go. They'd have lost a lot of money if the frames were failing at any significant rate. Which, of course, they weren't, cutesy name-calling notwithstanding.

"Crack-n-fail," like "Cramp-n-go-slow" and "Shi*mano," tells you nothing about the products and everything about how boring it can be working in bike stores in the winter. (I suspect that the arguably belittling term "wrench," meaning "mechanic," was coined by a bored bike store guy one winter.)

I worked in a shop in the late '80s or early '90s with a couple of guys who were vehement in stating that aluminum frames were far more unreliable than steel bikes and that titanium frames were well-nigh invulnerable.

I said to one, you had a Lightspeed titanium bike, right? What happened to it? "The chain stay cracked near the dropout." I then said to the other, "Where's your Giant titanium bike?" "It cracked through a weld." One of those guys had owned a steel Serotta that failed, too.

Neither saw any problem with maintaining their opinions on the durability of different frame materials. As far as they were concerned, aluminum frames failed because they were aluminum; steel and titanium frames failed despite being steel and titanium. Human nature.