Originally Posted by man of calibre
Personally, if I were designing a 'total performance system' from a clean sheet of paper, the first thing I would have done is to decide whether I was going to use millimeters or inches. To be fair, at least the bike represents the state of the art in its time, and as the frame will have a limited life anyhow it does not need to be backwards compatible.
You must be French at heart. Look at the older, now disregarded French bicyle - the only non-metric they succumbed to was the 1 3/16" ID on the head tube (even Japan tried 30mm there and folded). The Italians are really screwy. What in the world is a BB threaded 36mm * 24 tp inch? Of course we all use a RD hanger that's threaded 10mm * 26 tp inch? Bicycle measurements are insane