Originally Posted by
pdlamb
Pick one. Or more.
A. They had the wrong decals that said "Touring" instead of "Endurance."
B. Sport/Touring bikes hit the market before we had Influencers.
C. Designed with steel tubes that were hefty enough to avoid shimmy, and sporting tires that didn't flat when they saw a rock, Sport/Touring bikes of 30-40 years ago weighed pounds (Pounds! I tell you!!) more than a True Endurance Bike.
A woman I knew who rode with the Baltimore Bicycling Club had a bike custom built for her, in the late '70's or early '80's, by the late Pennsylvania frame builder Rodney Moseman. To accommodate her long legs and short torso, he designed it with a sloping top tube plus an extended head tube. First time I saw that design that I can remember.
Bikes that can fit in the Endurance category do seem to be all over the lot with regard to design specifics. Maybe I'm oversimplifying, but I figure they're bikes built for guys who are getting to be older and heavier but who still want to be able to ride a racy-looking bike with a level top tube, like the old days.
The it's-got-to-be-a-level-top-tube thing is a bit ironic, since a sloping top tube is both the obvious solution for getting the bars up where heavier and weaker riders need them to be and the standard design for present-day pro road racing bikes.
All that said, Cannondale could make a pretty good claim for originating the endurance category with the ST400, their first bike model to hit the stores.
Quoting from the article linked to below, from a thread started by SpeedOfLite a few years ago:
"The real virtue of the ST400 is its versatility. The bike has the trappings of a full-blown tourer, with room for panniers, fenders, and three water bottles, but the frame is lighter and stiffer than most racing frames on the market. With the right equipment, this frame could be ridden around the block or across the country, raced in a triathlon or thrashed through a cyclocross course, all with surprising competence. What allows the Cannondale to succeed where other sport-touring bikes fail is the same feature that offends traditionalists: its unusual construction using large-diameter, welded and heat-treated 6061 T6 aluminum tubes."