OLD and NEW Bikes

[two wheels]

I was talking with a fella that was admiring my wifes old trek and was saying that the geometry of the old steel frames was built more for speed than the newer WSD frames. Is this true or was he talking out of his *ss? Just curious!

 

[daveryanwyoming]

Woman's specific frames have evolved over the years. Where you might have gotten a smaller frame with proportionally shorter top tube when the first WSD frames hit the streets now you're likely to get a more relaxed head tube angle coupled with a steeper seat tube. The slacker head tube angle reclaims some of the wheelbase lost to the shorter top tube and reduces the likelihood of toe overlap. Depending on the fork that's spec'd for a frame and the resultant trail some of the modern WSD bikes could be a bit less responsive during hard cornering. The flip side is that they'd be more stable at speed in a straight line, less twitchy and more relaxed during hands free riding.

Does that make the bike 'built less for speed'? Not necessarily, but I'm sure less twitchy bikes appeal to a wider variety of riders, IOW a bigger market share.

BTW, the same could be said for men's bikes over the years. I remember when most 'racing' bikes, especially the imported Italian bikes seemed to all be built for crits with steep head tube angles, high bottom brackets and short chainstays/wheelbases. Then somewhere around the Lemond era 'classic stage race geometries' became popular with the angles backed off a bit, wheelbases lengthened a tad and font end geometries relaxed a bit. Even with the move to compact frames, for the most part companies haven't returned to the pure crit geometries.

These bikes aren't as responsive/twitchy as the steep, short crit frames but are they any less speedy?

-Dave