I beebopped around looking for the answer to this question and ran out of patience.

My bike's a 17yr old. I know it ain't as old as most I've read about in her. When will it become a classic?

Peace o/

I'm not sure about bicycles, but among classic car aficionados it's axiomatic that you do not refer to any car as "vintage" that was manufactured after your wife was born.

I have a 1977 Sekai 2500 Grandtour which I certainly view as vintage. However, my wife was born in 1964 so I keep quiet about it.

Mid 80's frame, friction shifting, tubular tires.

edit: Klein??? Some would call it an instant classic.
re-edit: You know how those "rules" are - always subject to exceptions.

Your bike doesn't exist without pictures and subjective questions like 'what is classic and/or vintage' sometimes brings out the worst in a forum. So here's a worthless opinion, Klein's have some mojo so it's at least iconic, if not classic. I wouldn't consider Y2K as vintage for another decade or two.

We are a pretty welcoming group here in Classic and Vintage.

For the most part, if you want to post about your bike here, we are fine with most any bike.

Easy fix; younger wife upgrade.

Ah, but this one is already younger, and furthermore threatens to kill me if I sell either our "vintage" '82 911SC, or the "vintage" '73 Land Cruiser. Think I'll stick with her.

Likely the wise choice; one can't ride when one is dead.

It's subjective: the Classic Rendezvous cut-off is 1983, for L'Eroica California it's (check me on this) 1987.

Many appraisers in the antiques trade say that something has to be 50 years old to qualify as an "antique".

YRMR, if you think what you own is a "Classic" then it is...for you.

Theres' really not a hard cutoff, as far as I can tell. It's more of a sliding scale, and the more that isn't current, the more "C&V" it is. Horizontal top tube? Lugged steel? Quill stem? Downtube levers or bar ends instead of brifters? Friction shifting?

But overall, we're a pretty welcoming group. So as long as you're not asking about a carbon fiber wonderbike with electronic shifting, we're probably open to discussing it.

I consider my 2000 (also 17 years old ) Waterford track bike as "classic", my 2002 Litespeed and Trek OCLV -- not so much although almost the same age

ITs dependant on the bike a bit in my opinion . My personal rough guidelines are that most bikes that still have a quill stem are old enough to be in consideration

How about a Lemond branded Calfee, or a Kestrel 200 with Mavic Zap shifting ?

I agree, everything is subjective. And, in fact, L' Eroica Italia, apparently welcomes new bikes with vintage parts & characteristics.

But, over the years there have been many fundamental shifts.

For MTBs, the older "vintage" ones ad a fairly square double triangle frame, horizontal top tubes, etc. The new ones are quite different.

Road bkes, one thinks of vintage lugged steel, but even Carbon Fiber frames have significantly evolved. There has been a move from round lugged tubes to shaped "monocoque" (or smooth assembled to appear as monocoque). So, I'd include most of the early lugged CF, including CF lugs as "vintage". Even some of the early monocoque frames had fairly straight tubes, plus a unique aero form that isn't seen with new frames.

Likewise, aluminum frames have evolved from basic round tubes (sometimes slightly bent) to hydroformed tubes resembling the CF frames.

Anyway, if it is "vintage" to you.. then who cares?

My 70's bikes I just consider old and my 90s bike is definitely new. Earlier bikes with nothing brazed on and delicate cottered cranks I consider worthy of the C&V title.

I consider like other collectibles and hobbies for approx 25 to be deemed "vintage or classic". But it's subjective right? And it doesn't matter?! If you like it, then buy it and ride the piss out of it.

Here's an idea, how about "L'Eroica" standards ? But for this C&V forum looks like anything from last century. I've seen a lot of Kool upgraded C&V bikes, here. KB

It's whatever you want it to be.

I'd agree, Classic but not yet Vintage Here are some pics
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Colors change at different angle:
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Peace o/

I think the question is whether vintage and classic is an era like the Muscle Car Era or is it a floating demarcation point in time or is it a set of common features exclusive of others?

For me, my opinion, classic and vintage is a fixed period, an era, that ended when aero cables, or God help us, ughhhh, brifters came into being much less anything carbon fiber. No matter how long into the future we extrapolate such bicycles they will never be vintage or classic.

Or about 1986 plus or minus a couple of solar cycles.

J

Oy

If you think it's old, it's old. If I think it's old, it's even older.

I think its a bit more ambiguous than the muscle car era --- then quite literally, --- there was an arms race between Chrysler, GM and Ford every year -- flexing their muscle with increasingly bigger and more powerful creations across the range ---

--- and then --- poof -- 1974 happened --- Corvette got plastic bumpers, the Mustang turned into something weird, the big blocks were neutered - and the era was just ........... gone

The muscle car era was also pretty short , starting in 1964 with 389 GTO's and ending in 1973 with SD455 Firebirds

With bicycles -- I named my '00 Waterford track machine as being a Classic, if not vintage yet, --- but its counterpart from 1945 or so, a Paramount trackie, - is both classic and vintage --- so its covering a whole bunch more years than something like the muscle car era

Folks here are pretty loose about the terms, but I try to be a bit precise.

To me, vintage implies age, either based simply on more than X years old, though I draw the line about bikes based on whether they are older than Index shifting or not.

Classic, is more special, and I only use it for bikes that were considered special at the time, or great examples of their era, or were among the first of a new class of bikes, ie. an early mountain bike, or the first with front suspension. If we think about Bianchi, anything old enough can be vintage, but it also has to be Celeste to be considered a classic.

These are my opinions only, and I'm only a stickler about them among friends, because arguing about it is snobbish.

Mind. Blown.

Seriously, though, that's a nice bike.

Old is within my life but not by much usually unless the bike is well used. Vintage is a cherished old bike with some sort of story. As such it's perhaps the most miss used term as most who claim it have no story. Classic is more a representation of an era, usually in better shape.


All this is really just fluff though. Andy.