These bikes aren't being marketed to the bottom dwelling denizens of the C&V forum who lurk on eBay, Craigslist, Goodwill, yardsales, snoop around neighbors garages and go dumpster diving. We don't buy new retro-reproductions of midlevel 1970's production bikes because we can find the real thing for much less through exhaustive searching equipped with decades of experience.

These bikes are for people who are busy doing other things and they come to you, the bike expert, and ask "I going to buy a bike, is Schwinn a good brand?" Explaining to them how to determine what bike they need and how to fit it takes up the first hour. Next you tell them the best bikes are 20 year old used ones and with another hour of training you'll teach them how to spot a good one and if they haven't already fallen asleep they are running for either the door or nearest open window. Just write "Fuji Connoisseur" on a slip of paper and tell them to go check it out.

Hopefully these bikes will do well just because they are head and shoulders better looking than the plastic blobs that fill bike stores today.

None the less I'm going to nitpik anyway. The Connoisseur too closely replicates what would have been the 1970's entry level racer in a bike companies lineup. Close brake clearances, no dropout eyelets and that 52-42 chainwheel are indicators. But the 1970's entry level racer was no better suited back then for entry level racing than his sport-touring model stablemate with the eyelets. Today there is no demand for a steel retro racer. Everyone who goes into a bike shop to get something for "riding around, bike paths, maybe some touring, maybe some racing" is going to be shown a full-zoot carbon fiber skinny tire racing bike because the clerk can't imagine racing on anything else.

So the Connoisseur comes very very close to being a bike that could be useful for a lot of things but leaving off the eyelets makes attaching fenders and racks a hassle. And it needs more tire clearance. And that crank looks like an inexpensive swagged Sugino Maxy that was pretty cool on $125 bike boom bikes (I ride one even today) but today they could have picked a better crank to recreate.