oldbikenewbike

Perfect answer!

eja_ bottecchia

If you have seen pics of my 1989 Bottecchia SLX you'd know why.

Doohickie

This is actually #1 for me. They are the cheapest way to get into the game.

jr59

I in this camp.

I dabble with some vintage racing bikes. They are the ones I would dream of when I couldn't afford a tube, much less a
Campy racing bike. But oh how I would dream of them.

Truth of the matter, I would rather ride a custom alloy bike. Steel, Ti, tigged, lugged, whatever.
I still ride my vintage stuff, but if I had to just pick one bike to have, it would be my custom Ti!

I'm really glad I don't live in the northwest, I'd have more bikes than I could ever ride.

kaliayev

Personally it's about the ride quality, aesthetics, and value of steel.

vinfix

I had kept a couple of bikes from the early 80's, from before they were vintage. Years later I didn't cycle much except for some casual MTB, so I finally sold/donated them. When I got the bug to get back into it, I looked at new bikes but was completely befuddled. Everything had changed, with too many expensive choices. So I bought something I understood- a 1981 vintage steel Italian race bike. Now 5-6 years later, I've moved onward & upward, and my main ride is 90's technology. I've tried several new bikes, but still prefer the feel & look of a steel road bike. Easier to work on, too.

dbakl

I ride em cause they're just like the bikes I rode in 1972, and they were NEW!

Giacomo 1 

Well, now that I'm 53 years old, I don't want to be riding a rolling billboard!

The newer carbon frames are just to loud for me. Loud paint jobs with big logo's that seem to be stuck to every tube on the bike just scream, "look at me people!". Well, I don't want to be that grey haired guy that just seem's to be trying alittle to hard, you know what I mean? Old guys just look better on vintage frames IMHO.

Also, you could buy vintage bikes that were made in many countries. Buy an Italian bike, and it was actually crafted and made in Italy. Same for Japanese, American and French bike's. With today's carbon bikes, the vast majority are made in China, and nearly all in the same factory, irregardless of the name on the tubes. Only at the high end can you find a bike not made in China.

Plus, I now have 3 very nice, ridable, good looking vintage bikes. Try owning 3 modern bikes - you'll be broke!

dbakl

Plus, everyone will understand why you're so slow on such an old bike...

SingleSpeeDemon

I like restoring and riding vintage bikes because the old steel has a soul...as if it holds the stories of the hands that crafted it. Yes, I know it's an odd notion, but I tend to anthropomorphize things such as bicycles.

slowtostart

Because.

Wulf

I stopped cycling from about 1991 until last year. Never really kept up with the technology so when I brought my bike in for new tires, the LBS guys stood around gawking at it. I learned to appreciate the workmanship in a quality steel bike and I studdied the lugwork and details of makers like Eisentraut, Ritchey and Bruce Gordon. The molded, extruded layed-up plastic bikes held no interest for me.

element-82

couldn't afford them back in the day
no plastic
love the retro look

bikingshearer 

The top-end lugged steel beauties were what I lusted after in my ill-spent youth. Now I can afford some of them. They just look "right" to me. They ride great, too.

Now where I part company with some of my C&V family is on components. I like Campy 10-speed drivetrains. And modern brakes work better than what was available in the '70s. You can get close enough mating modern pads and aero cable routing to old Campy Nuovo calipers (I have a couple of frames that require a longert reach than you can get with Campy dual pivots), but modern dual pivots still work better. So for me, the best of all worlds is classic lugged steel with Campy 10-speed drivetrains and brakes.

Chombi

You do have to admit though that a good number of bike makers, mostly Italian, were kind of guilty of the same uber advertising on their bikes in the mid 80's as I remember all those Cioccs, Guerciottis and Colnagos with decals of and pantographs of their brand names all over their bike frames and components and even on their handlebar tapes and saddles. My brother and I used to make it a game to count how many brand name decals and pantographs we can find on the bikes hanging in our LBS's back then...easily way into the double digits for most of the Italian "Peacock" bikes we called them....athough they did not use as tall font sizes as they do now on "modern" bikes.....but then maybe it because you can only put so much graphics on tubes juat a bit more than an inch in diameter.....
JMOs

Chombi

SkippyX

Agreed.

I also think it's pretty cool to be riding a bike that was made when I was a sophomore in High School - all those years ago.

WNG

The aesthetic, the quality, the must-haves, and a bit of sentimentality. These bikes are what we're passionately familiar with when we were young, and now older, can afford and still appreciate the old, and that the latest isn't always the greatest.

I have nothing against today's stuff. I just don't personally find a need to upgrade to it. I still get plenty of buzz from my older toys.
All too often the younger set don't care for older tech as they have no history or respect for it.

Ed in Toronto

Reliability, you can have it a steel bike for a lifetime if you take care of it.


Feel, I grew up riding downtube shifters, and I don’t want to change.


Nostalgia.


The uniqueness factor, instead of being on a treadmill of ever upgrading to the latest flavor of cool-aid. My vintage bike has that coolness factor today, and it won’t fade to last years model, it’s past that, it’ll still be cool next year and in 5 years.

steppinthefunk 

Because they don't require wearing a spandex costume.

Gary Fountain

Exactly. I too have my favourite current Aussie builders like Baum but I just can't afford a new one but I feel more than happy riding my older steel 'time capsules' as the new carbon frames really do nothing for me.

calamarichris

d.) None of the above. I like vintage bikes because it's pretty embarrassing flying around in an F16 chassis around powered by a Sopwith Camel radial engine.

conradpdx

Well for me there are a few different points. First most my bike riding as a youth was on Huffy. However I became a fan of utility bikes when I took up a paper route at age 12. For that job I bought a Schwinn Workline Cruiser, and that bike was indestructible, and much more comfortable than my Huffy 12 speed, soon my Huffy was sitting even for my non work related riding, which was a lot.

Fast forward to 1992 when I moved to Portland, and while living downtown knew I couldn't afford a car and the parking etc. So I spent $1200 on a Raleigh MT 800. And used it for commuting and fun (back when the fire lanes where public access off Skyline Blvd.) Again that bike was "bomb proff", having only ever had to get the front shock repaired once in about 6 years of daily riding. I learned from this bike that I really didn't need all the gears for 99% of my riding was in a 5 gear range, and that a quality bike is worth the price.

Now a days I ride this:



I like C&V bikes because I see no need to throw away good bikes. Perhaps I'm cheap, or perhaps it for environmental reasons, but on a whole I don't like waste and am a big fan of efficiency. I picked up the Superbe for $200.00. And I've only put about $40.00 (not including the B-17 I won for best bike on a tweed ride this last spring) into cleaning it and upgrading it. So as of now I've got a high quality commuter bike, for about the price of a box store bike. And kept a perfectly good bike from the landfill. And I know full well that this bike will easily out live me with a few drops of oil every month.

Keeping that first reason in mind, I don't trust Aluminium or Carbon for frames. Aluminium frames are good until it gets a ding, then it's pretty much toast. Also the ride is a lot harsher. Before the Superbe I had an Iron Horse hybrid that I rode that was alloy frame, and I was never able to get comfortable on it no matter how much I tried to tweek the ride/set up. Carbon is is just fiberglass cloth epoxied in layers. And though it is strong, again once it is dinged, it's pretty much gone. Also for Carbon frames the epoxy that is used is oil based, and just like plastic and most other oil based products, it degrades with exposure to the sun (some manufactures even assign an expiration date on them). Thus in my opinion neither of these bikes are an efficient use of materials, or a practical use of my funds.

And lets face it, nothing rides like steel. I'm reluctant to even swap my rims to alloy (even here in rainy Portland), because I know part of the "cush" ride of my Superbe is that the steel rims flex more than alloy and absorb some of the road shock. Though it might not be much, I like the ride of my bike and don't want to ruin it.

Throw in the fact that I don't like derailers (they get banged up a lot on bike racks around here), the S&A hubs is all I really need for gears most the time, I can shift while stopped, the steel frame will trip traffic light magnets at intersections, and the ease of maintenance and repairs. My tool roll is an S&A cone spanner, an adjustable wrench, a screw driver, tire levers and a tube. Short of the BB. I can fix nearly everything on this bike with those tools.

Which reminds me that part of real beauty of the bicycle is in it's simplicity. For all the advancements of the last 50 years. The latest and greatest is only more power efficient than the old by a miniscule amount. It's enough to make the difference in professional races, but for most of us it's really not that significant. And definitely not enough in my opinion to justify the cost differences.

And like others, a good lug frame is beautiful. By far more beautiful than anything in aluminium or carbon.

Chombi

Then you should condier taking on the alias of "Gnome Monosoupape" then.....

rekmeyata

I like riding them because they don't break, especially the 80's era; and they look better then production bikes today, you have to pay a lot of money to get a custom bike to look as good as they use to look.

I like older stuff in general because they last longer with less problems and cost less to repair due to shear simplicity, I have several classic cars and the couple I drive a lot never have problems unlike my newer schit I own or have owned. And bikes...same thing, I have friends who have new bikes and their always getting this fixed or that replaced, yet my old stuff just keeps going.

jimmuller 

Interesting answers. I could say I like the ride of steel better than alumi-titani-arbon-fiber, but that would be like saying I don't like turtle soup when I've never tasted turtle soup. But I can see what turtle soup looks like. And I know I wouldn't be able to cook it.

By contrast, I know how to work on vintage bikes. Vintage bikes work well for me, do everything I need from them. They look great. Riding a bike two thirds as old as myself is cool. What's not to like?