Lack of style
 

Yes. Rarely do I see a paint job/color combo that I think looks nice. Maybe bike company's only have a choice of what Taiwan is offering? Bring back two and three color fades please!

Nah, Mike Varley at BlackMountainCycles picks out his colors, they are painted at the factory in Taiwan.

So they could do whatever they wanted, if they went through the trouble Mike does to get the colors "just right" in his opinion.

If you have to leave your bike locked and unattended, flashy paint jobs are probably not a good idea--it's like hanging a sign that says "Well Worth Stealing".

I have to say, bikes as fashion statements is an aspect of cycling I really can't relate to.

Subscribed.

So pitch the manufacturers some ideas. Maybe it will land you a job with one of them.

Personally, I don't really care since I go custom when the look of the bike is important to me. For something like a touring/commuting bike, it really doesn't matter that much with the proviso that I won't buy an ugly color.

Who cares about style, cycling is not some fashion show.

To a degree there are a couple brands of hard tail that were distinct in the metal era such as GT with thier triple triangle signature. However now the engineering distinctives have caved to engineering differences which are a bit more minor to the eye, like Trek's Iso-speed. The carbon era frames tend to be shapely but to make one more prominent than another is just an aspect that is left to the wayside in light of engineering. That leaves it up to the artwork designers who are stuck in a hard place between the afore mentioned bling vs blend balance. My personal collection has a mixture because I like flair but also commute in a city so I save the flair for less theft prone fun.

your example applied to bikes would be if comfort hybrids and road bikes looked different...and they do.

a corvette is purpose built for speed and excitement like a road bike.
a civic is built for utility, reliability, and value like a comfort hybrid.

so by your example, bike brands do differentiate.


I am a huge fan of individuality with bikes. It's expression.
all my bikes are unique in build and most are unique in paint scheme. The ones that arent fully unique in paint are still uncommon due to being older frames or from low production brands.

new paint is great!

Make up for the lack of style in bikes by making yourself stylish.

To look good is already to go fast.
- Paul Fournel


-Tim-

And all this time I thought the OP was about the look of bikes, not what people wear. I should learn to read not so good.

Style, individuality, panache, craftsmanship, brand identity are absolutely important to some and of no concern to others.

When bikes were made of steel the same situation existed, the earliest examples were hand made, time was spent gracefully curving the tubes, shaping the stem, polishing fasteners smooth and attaching ornate head badges. These bikes were very expensive and owners were proud to show them off. They were the exotic sports car of the time.

Industrial progress brought about cheaply made steel tubing and mass production techniques. Fast and efficient manufacturing replaced artfully sculpting metal, which made bicycles very affordable. Unfortunately they also came to be thought of as cheap children's toys not an adult luxury item. At least in America, anyway.

Other parts of the world had a different experience, steel bikes were brazed lugs and tubes. Old world craftsmanship was alive and thriving, one look at an old french built frame with intricate detailed shaping of the lugs shows how important style was to those builders.

Today bicycle design/style are limited by the advancement of technology. Excluding the few hand made lugged frames still being made, frame construction is optimized to take advantage of the material strength and production capabilities (computer modeling, laid-up composites, hydro-formed aluminum, etc) add in the desire to make the bike as light as possible and bicycles end up in a similar situation as modern automobile design. Different engineers, different companies, different materials...but the design limits create cookie-cutter clones.

"Style choices" are largely paint it and/or buy a bunch of expensive color anodized components to replace the perfectly good components on the bike now.

Hand made. No lugs. One of a kind.

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...57246d997b.jpg

Likening a bike frame to a car body really doesn't work. Bike frames are such simple minimal machines that even small differences in appearance will likely affect function, and that flourish which is unnecessary will almost certainly involve trade offs in diminished performance. There's really not that much room for inefficiency when you're balancing a 1/4 horsepower engine on 2 relatively thin wheels.

Bike frames vary a lot--a BMX does not look much like a TT bike, for example. But those variations reflect that people are using the bikes for very different things more than they do the style senses of the makers.

I think there's a little more to it than what you're very ably describing--I snipped most of it for length, but it was all good.

But, the biggest problem with using the look of a bike as self-expression is that those fine touches are pretty much invisible to people 15 feet away, and really only significant if you know something about bikes. If I'm close enough to spot a bike like you're describing, I will try to get a better look, but people look at me like I'm nuts when I do.

Now drive down the street in a fancy car, and all kinds of heads are turning.

Nobody looks at the color of their bike when riding it. And there is only so much you can do with the geometry of a bike. Style options are limited. These aren't like cars.

This bike is not a car and therefor lacks style. Just thought you should know.

Similar to my custom fixed gear.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...f3aa711894.jpg


-Tim-

It's not about comparing two completely different machines, it's how the same design is used across several companies. Most cars look very similar because everyone uses the same design criteria. It isnt meant to be an exact comparison of the final product, but an analysis of how craftsmanship, art, style whatever you want to call it has been replaced by data driven design. The end result is everyone's stuff looks the same.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...54a0b63403.jpg
Pure art. Especially so, knowing hard difficult it is to bend/form 3.2Al 2.5V Ti.

You're quoting me out of context--he was saying the style of car bodies varies more than bikes, and to take your point, the need for data-driven design is probably even stronger in bikes than cars.

The frame shape and style can only have so much variation. It's just the nature of the machine. It has the be shaped roughly the same and there isn't a lot of option to add on uneeded body panels that just look cool like a Cadillac can have tail fins of the Corvette can have the high front fenders. All that would just had bulk and weight to a machine that's supposed to be small and light.

But you can make a bike your own with a little pizzaz. Color can come in pedals, bottle cages, mounting bolts, valve caps, vinyl decals that give it your own flavor (Star Wars logo, favorite sports team, little graphic if a guy riding a bike, flames, motivational saying, whatever makes it YOURS)

So while a base bike right out of the store may not have individuality, you can give it some.

Chic
 

Copenhagen Style, Ride what you have, Dress Nicely..

https://i.pinimg.com/474x/0e/1c/5a/0...cycle-girl.jpg