New Bikes Peddle High Technology
What’s new in the world of bicycles?
How about a mountain bike frame so light (2.7 pounds) you can lift it with your pinkie? The carbon fiber frame will cost only $3,000; tires and components are extra.
How about a bicycle seat without seat post? A fiberglass suspension strut slopes up from the top frame tube of the bicycle to hold the seat, creating a “floating” saddle that virtually eliminates any jarring.
How about a wireless cyclometer? A radio transmitter sends a signal from the front wheel to a digital-readout speedometer/odometer.
How about a hard-shell bicycle helmet weighing less than 6 ounces?
These are among the items you’ll find in your neighborhood bike shop in the coming year. Bicycle dealers from the Western states and Canada gathered recently in the Anaheim Convention Center to preview the newest bicycles and accessories during the annual Interbike Expo trade show. More than 12,000 buyers representing 3,500 stores perused the wide assortment of products of about 500 exhibiting companies during the three-day event.
Two distinct themes dominated the show. First, by paying attention to comfort and convenience, the bicycle industry is doing all it can to woo the entry-level buyer, the potential customer who hasn’t mounted a bike in years. Second, the industry is continuing an infatuation with exotic, lightweight materials like titanium and carbon fiber, to satisfy the avid rider’s demand for the ultimate in lightweight, high-performing bikes.
A new genre of bike called the “hybrid” or “cross bike” is an example of the industry’s attention to the bicycle buyer who wants a comfortable, upright ride for around town or fitness riding. The bikes represent a cross between the popular mountain bike and the traditional road bike.
“It’s the Swiss army knife of bicycles,” said Tony Maniscalco of the Bianchi Corp., which pioneered the hybrid bike. The bikes have medium-fat tires, so they’re good for some off-road venturing, but are lighter than mountain bikes.
“We’re well aware that 80% of the people who own mountain bikes never ride in the mountains,” said Gary Fisher of Fisher MountainBikes, a pioneer of the Marin County mountain bike movement that became a nationwide boom. “The hybrid bike is ideal for suburbia and for mixed terrain. It’s much quicker than a mountain bike.”
Most bike manufacturers displayed a hybrid or some sort, either with upright handlebars or traditional drop bars, most of them retailing between $400 and $500.
“There seems to be more attention to comfort, convenience and safety,” said Ray Keener, vice president of Catalyst Communication, a bicycle dealer marketing company. “I think the entry-level buyer gets more and more for his money every year.”
Keener was especially impressed with new mountain bike derailleurs from Shimano and SunTour that make shifting gears easier than ever. The shifters are attached under the handlebar, so the rider can steer, brake and shift without moving the hands. Push the upper thumb lever one notch and the bike shifts into a lower gear; push the other thumb lever and it jumps to a higher gear.
Attention to rider comfort and safety was evident in the preponderance of gel saddles--bike seats filled with a gushy substance that dampens road shock and prevents saddle sores. The floating saddle suspension device, called the Allsop Soft-Ride System, takes comfort a step further.
Another new device called Rock Shocks incorporates oil-dampened shock absorbers in the front forks of the bike frame to ease the bone-jarring nature of a mountain bike descent.
The Offroad Flex Stem accomplishes the same thing at the handlebar stem, while the same company also has introduced a mountain bike with a rear shock absorber.
One tire manufacturer will be blessed by beginners who fear flat tires--the PolyAir tire is a one-piece polyurethane tire that eliminates the inner tube altogether. The rider can blithely ride through a bed of nails without getting a flat.
Steve Ready, producer of the Interbike show and executive director of the National Bicycle Dealers Assn., was buoyed by attendance at the show and by the number of promising new products and bicycles.
“After the boom from ’83 to ‘87, the overall market flattened out last year and is up slightly this year, but I think we’re seeing an influx of fitness-minded (baby) boomers into the bike market--discriminating consumers willing to spend money on quality bicycles,” he said.
“The toy store image of bicycling is dead and buried. Cycling is an exciting and sophisticated sport, and people are no longer shocked by $500, $600, even four-figure price tags.”
Even so, consumers might be shocked at the price tags dangling from bikes at the high end of the market.
Trickle-down technology from aerospace engineering has ushered in such exotic frame materials as carbon fiber and titanium for bicycles. Titanium weighs 40% less than chrome-moly steel, the material of choice on most bicycles, yet has a higher strength-to-weight ratio. It never rusts or corrodes, and it dampens road shock better than steel.
Advanced composites, loosely called “carbon fiber,” have similar attributes. Composites can also be molded effectively to create a one-piece bicycle frame. One-piece frames eliminate lugs, the joints that hold bicycle tubes together, which are generally the weakest parts of any bicycle frame.
This technology doesn’t come cheap. The cyclist who covets a titanium or molded composite bike can expect to part with $2,500 to $3,000 or more to indulge his craving for the best the bike industry has to offer.
Visual as well as technical razzle-dazzle was evident at the bike show.
Bike clothing is taking a cue from surf wear, featuring bold graphics and neon colors. Even some bike frames and bike parts have splashes of neon.
Amid all this, in a quiet booth in a corner of the Convention Center, Greg Barron of Alameda, Calif., was offering Ridable Replicas. One of his high-wheeler Penny Farthings, circa 1880, checks in about 50 times the weight of any other bike in the show and comes in one color: black.
Another company, Columbia, was offering Western Flyers of the 1950s ilk, complete with built-in horn; fat, curved tubing, and streamers flowing from the handlebars.
You couldn’t lift these bikes with a pinkie, but, as Barron said, you can have a lot of fun riding one. Which is, as it has been since the 1880s, the point of bicycling.
