by blutto on Sat Dec 24, 2022 4:29 am
" At this price point, people are definitely buying based on looks."
....so what you are saying is people are just buying the wheeled equivalent of an expensive designer dress or a handbag....and I'm sure that is true in a lot of cases , I mean poseurs gotta pose eh...
"In fact, I would say that most consumers pay the big price premium for a Colnago over, say, a Canyon based on looks and brand history?"
....what's funny here is that you seem to be overlooking something, its function as the key part of a bicycle....Colnago got to the position it had not because of nice paint jobs but because they provided great performance and were at key times great innovators ( Merckx wasn't drawn to the bling he was there because he was certain Ernesto would help him win, and for The Cannibal winning was not just everything it was the only thing ) ...its something I found out when I bought my first Colnago....so here I was having owned a lot of bikes, several with frames custom built by builders of renown, and having the seemingly good sense to stay away from something that was just a shiny bauble that was the preferred frame of moneyed poseurs, to never consider a Colnago...in fact I often laughed at the whole Colnago clown cult ...well until, against my better judgement, I bought one....well damn, it proved to be the best frame I had ever raced or just plain ridden....so I bought a couple more and they were better, and then they kinda lost the thread but I kept coming back to each new model release hoping they may again had found what I prized as a great performance package...and was hoping to get some real information about on the road performance in this thread but got some musings about looks and feelings and some odd comments about geometry ( btw don't think its functionally off much but it has had to be tweaked to accomodate some changes in riding styles such as fat tires and changing cleat placement... )...
Read, some people "pay the big price premium for a Colnago over, say, a Canyon based based on" the idea it may actually perform better and not just look better in a photograph or at the cafe...
Cheers