You have to figger, the only reason bike manufacturers went to 27" in the first place was for the american market back in the "bike boom" days. Back in those days "metric" was a curse word and it confused too many people trying to figure out what 700 centimeters was.
I'm not sure if this has been mentioned already, but the "c" DOES NOT MEAN CENTIMETERS. That wheel would be about 23 feet in diameter! "700" is the nominal diameter in millimeters, and the letters A-D originally designated the width of the rim. For some reason, we still use the "700" and "c" even though they have no literal meaning.
proof:
Sheldon