Originally Posted by jwc
that would put it about 1979. I do remember (funny I remember the dollar amount) $179.95 on clearance. I don't know what that works out to in today's dollars.
I found a reference for conversion of dollars to current value. Conversion factor is 0.372 current dollars to 1 dollar from 1979. So...
$180 = ~$480 today
If people were willing to dump the brifters for barend or downtube shifters, companies could make a quality bike for that money today. In the under $500 road bike sector, this is about what you can get:
http://www.ibexbikes.com/Bikes/CLS-3300-Details.html
It has lower range components than what you got on your bike back in the day. You probably got mid-range components for the time period vs bottom-end on the IBEX today. I don't know how low-end today compares with mid-range from the late 70s in terms of quality though. They claim 22.4 lbs, which if true, isn't bad for a $400 bike. Again, you compromise with low-end components and downtube shifters (I like the DT shifters on my Shogun just fine though...)