Long-time readers of this column may remember that I occasionally offer all of you a chance to place yourselves in my scuffed shoes and, given two pieces of information, guess at how they will come together and make a column. That time has come again. I will give you the two items from which I will build my column, and you can try to guess what the column will be about. Since you are probably a lot saner than I am, your guess will probably not have anything to do with what I'm actually going to write about, but that's missing the point. What would be hitting the point, you ask? Hmmm, have to get back to you on that. Without further ado, then, the two incidents. Read them, close your eyes, make an incorrect guess, open eyes, continue.
Couple more facts about Europe. They have traditionally had a tough time obtaining "strategic materials" like steel and aluminum, and they have traditionally been willing to pay quite a bit of money for bicycles. Put that together, and you can guess that Europeans tend to own expensive, light (to conserve materials) and delicate (because they are working tools, not toys for kids, and are treated accordingly) bicycles. You can also guess that European bike manufacturers tend to build a lot of bikes like that, because that's what sells.
Now, we'll think about America a bit, more particularly, America right after World War II. Plenty of steel and aluminum to go around, great economy, no serious use for bikes, and a strong chance that bikes will be abused by their primary consumers, i.e. kids. Therefore, American bikes have traditionally been heavy, reasonably strong (because they were made from near-limitless quantities of mild steel) and cheap (because bikes aren't taken seriously in America).
Over the course of the years from 1945 to 1975, a few standards emerged on both sides. Let's call them, um, "European" and "American". The "European" bikes featured thinner tubing, small threaded bottom bracket shells, three-piece aluminum cranks, lightweight alloy components, aluminum rims, and a sizing system which placed nearly everyone on a 700cm (about 27") wheel with differently sized frames. The Europeans also put derailleurs on nearly everything they built.
"American" standards, as popularized by Schwinn, included a thick, non-threaded bottom bracket, heavy, thick steel tubing, steel rims, steel headsets and hubs, heavy and cheap one-piece steel cranks, and a sizing system which relied on different wheel sizes, i.e. an American child might be given a 20" wheeled bike where a European child might be given a 700cm bike with a smaller frame. While Europeans preferred derailleur-controlled, multi-speed designs, Americans used simple single-speed or three-speed bikes, usually with a coaster brake. Slow and heavy, but able to take a lot of abuse.
Imagine, for just a minute, a group of European children, and a group of American children. Both groups are watching motocross on television in 1969, because motocross has become rather popular world-wide. Both groups want to be like their motocross heroes. Both groups decide to go outside and race their bikes. Both groups construct a small course with a few dirt hills. Both groups have someone hold the starting flag. When that flag drops, both groups take off.
The European children, with their large wheels and multiple gears, immediately wreck or damage their bikes on the first few jumps. Nobody makes it to the end of the course. The group of children come back together, take a look at their rather expensive and rather badly damaged "ten-speeds", and decide this whole Bicyle Moto-Cross thing wasn't such a great idea.
And the American kids? Well, you can get your answer just by watching the beginning of "On Any Sunday". Their single-speed, mild-steel, forty-pound bikes actually hold up to this punishment. A couple of them bend their forks, but forks cost ten dollars from the local Schwinn store and can be replaced. They're having a great time; so great, in fact, that older kids and adults start to get involved. And thus, BMX begins.
The next twenty years, from 1970 to 1990, see a continual refining of the American children's bike into a nearly perfected BMX bike. Cr-Mo replaces mild steel. Redline Flights replace the one-piece Ashtabula and Schwinn cranks, frames are made longer and redesigned to handle better. In 1987, it was possible to purchase a long-lasting, truly Pro-sized, twenty-eight-pound BMX bike and race on it for five years without serious problems.
We had picked up some European ideas, but they had been modified with a healthy dose of BMX common sense. The dainty Dia-Compe caliper brakes of the European bikes became the rough, rugged, and powerful Dia-Compe MX-900/MX-1000 twins. We had alloy rims, but they were double-walled and reinforced for heavy jumping. The small, square bottom bracket spindle of the European three-piece cranks became the massive, automotive-driveshaft-style spindle used on Profile and Boss cranks. Bikes got better and better. Older riders started keeping their bikes for years at a time without modification, painting them brown or rubbing the paint off entirely. It became rather fashionable to have a crummy old bike that worked. Riders who bought new bikes and gear all the time were called "Trick Stars", and nobody wanted to be called a "Trick Star", believe me.
And then, at the height of BMX bike design, the sport itself took a dive. NBL and ABA membership plummeted. Local tracks closed. Bike shops stopped carrying BMX stuff. The weakened sanctioning bodies gave more and more control to the major manufacturers.
Those major manufacturers suffered from jealousy. They saw the big money being made in mountain bikes. Mountain bikes were bikes as the Europeans saw them: expensive, delicate, difficult to maintain. And they were extremely profitable, as demonstrated by Trek's rise from small garage company to massive conglomerate corporation, all paid for by high-profit mountain bikes.
Some BMX manufacturers went headlong into the mountain bike business, but some of them decided to try to make BMX bikes more like those delicate, expensive, high-profit mountain bikes. So we got the aluminum frame, the pressed-in forks, disc brakes, cassette hubs, and all the other pieces of gadgetry which plague MTB riders; even suspension forks made a brief but disgraceful appearance, as chronicled in last month's column.
When the sport bounced back in 1996 or so, this new generation of BMX bikes sold like the proverbial hotcakes, at high prices and massive profits. They wore out in a hurry, so customers came back to buy again, and as with sporting motorcycles the graphics and frame gimmicks were changed every year in an attempt to bully riders who didn't need new bikes to buy them anyway. And that is where we stand today.
The last Darrell Young was made fifteen years ago, and if you could find somebody willing to sell you one, you could probably win a couple of races on it. Which of today's SpeedBoxP61XLR8R frames will still be ridable fifteen years from now? Which of them will, like a Darrell Young, sell used for twice what they cost new?
When I broke the cranks on my Klein last week, I had a sick, sinking feeling inside. It wasn't just that I would need to replace them. It was the fact nothing I could buy, whether I spent $50 or $550, would last as long as a set of Profiles. I searched bike shop and manufacturer websites in vain, but all the cranks were soft aluminum, none of them guaranteed to last much longer than it would take the average rider to come up with enough money for another pair. I settled on Shimano Deore XT cranks, since XT is theoretically better than LX. They cost as much as a set of Profiles. Based on my experience so far with mountain biking on aluminum cranks, I expect them to last between eight and twelve months. The last set of Profiles I bought, in 1990, are still around, but as the bike shop people kept telling me, "MTB stuff doesn't last as long as BMX stuff, because it's lighter and stiffer." Lighter than what? Stiffer than what? Is it worth it to pay what amounts to a consistent twenty-dollar-per-month lifetime crank charge to have "lighter" and "stiffer"? Has the half-pound I saved by having a small bottom bracket and square spindle ever helped me out? Nope, but it's helped the crank manufacturers out, all of whom say, "Aluminum cranks will naturally wear on a steel spindle", as if that's my fault, and not theirs for designing it that way! Why not make steel cranks on a steel spindle? It's certainly possible. Sugino did a Cr-Mo crank on a steel square spindle in the Eighties, although the result left something to be desired. However, it's not the European way.
Luckily for us, there are still some bikes available which follow the "American" BMX tradition. The Redline John Purse bikes, Chris Moeller's original Challengers and Holmeses, and the variety of trapped-in-the-Seventies MCS designs are all better choices than the mini-mountain bikes. Even GT has seen fit to produce a back-to-basics bike, although the sheer cynicism of their doing so makes me choke.
It is worthwhile to remember, however, that the business plans for virtually all the major manufacturers place BMX, not as a legitimate sport in its own right, but as a stepping stone to MTB riding. This is why we're being given bikes which are mountain bikes in all but name. This is why we're being conditioned to pay nearly a thousand dollars for a top-notch race bike. This is why we're being sold products which break and fail.
The manufacturers have a scenario in mind. It's a scenario where we give ourselves totally to the "European" standard. From their perspective, everybody wins. The bikes are new and fresh-looking each year, there is plenty of excitement, the profit margins are huge, and riders are discreetly coaxed out of racing and into MTB riding by the time they are out of high school. The time will come, according to this scenario, when the Jim Boswells of the future expect to break their equipment, and expect to have to pay big money to replace it with stuff that isn't really any better.
Don't let this happen. Don't support the gimmick manufacturers,
don't change your Cr-Mo frame every year for no reason, don't pay big
money for questionable results. Because every time you do, you are
helping the old standard of BMX change into the gold standard of
"European" cycling. It's not "gold" because it's better, it's "gold"
because it's wildly profitable for everyone. Everyone, that is, except
for you and me.