Interesting question. I think many of today's "features" are simple marketing schemes to give the appearance of aero advantage. For instance, Tom D.'s article on the P3C discussed the aerodynamics of its rear wheel design. However, he mentioned that the cutouts on the QR and the K-Factor served pretty much no purpose in one of his other reviews. A picture of a Kestrel was posted on ST recently. It had horizontal dropouts on the frame, but it had no seat tube. What's the point?!?!?!?

Maybe......just maybe........folks should just buy a bike that fits them and train like crazy on it instead of debating the advantages of hidden brakes and wheel placements.

I have to say that there is A LOT of suff out recently that is old news wearing a new hat. I'm not going to argue that there are some real advantages to REAL aerodynamic design, however I've got to say I think most of it is for looks.

Rear brake placement under the bike is stupid. Wether it is more aero down there is not the point. It is hard to service, picks up tonnes of crap from the road, and is usually proprietary.

Integrated forks is another one that seems pretty pointless. They still use 1 1/8" headsets and are about as wide as a traditional front end. Again proprietary.

Most shapes are not really aero (the scott plasma comes to mind - very cool and light, but about as aero as a Trek Madone).

Maybe i'm just bitter because I've got a 7 year old Ti bike, but it is nice to know that I can still get a new fork, new brakes, don't worry about wheel compatability, can get a replacement headset, a new seat post or saddle (and change the height), reconfigure the front end easily to anything I want, etc, etc.

Maybe I'm sacrificing a few minutes over 56miles, big whop, I usually beat all the fast riders out of the water by that anyway, and no matter what I'm getting crushed on the run.

Don't get me wrong, given the opportunity to lower my CdA I'm all for, just not at the expense of not being able to get a new fork, or brake, or change my saddle height. I think it is really going to stink to have to find all these specalty parts in a couple years.

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This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time. - Fight Club
Industry Brat.

You're just looking at it from the aero perspective. There's plenty of development available for the future. Think in terms of materials (strength, stiffness, fatigue life, etc) or structural design (lighter bikes).

I completely agree with this. There's hell of a lot more to a performance bicycle than just it's aerodynamics.

One thing I also expect to see is the descending price of the mouldmaking process and development time allowing smaller firms the chance to create more complicated tube sections and frame shapes................... whether they do anything or not is another matter.

How much more can really be done with the double diamond style frame? New materials or being a little lighter aren't going to enhance performance to any great degree. Don't look for any huge aerodynamic advances either as there's probably not a lot left to play with.

Of course the marketing departments will tell us different.

Agreed, I think its down to more of a refinement than a drastic change. 900g frame taken to 700g isn't different, just better.

I think most of the plateau-ing you may be seeing is due to all the UCI restrictions of what is allowed in races. If they had left the door wide open years ago without all of today's constraints then we'd probably see a lot more innovation.

-- Boris

Agreed. I think there's alot more to potential with bicycles if companies could profitably operate outside the UCI parameters. Personally, I think it gotten to the point where things are stiff enough/light enough, etc. Do we really need 1-1/4" headsets for road bikes and oversized handlebars? Maybe for the 10 guys on the Tour de France that put out enough wattage to make a difference, but for the average buyer, it makes no sense.

I'd like to see more integration of what we really need to carry with us on the bike. How about a better place to store a spare tire/CO2 than our back pocket or saddle bag? Or what about a mount we can use for race numbers? Or some better way to carry 12 gel packets other than e-taping it to our top tube? Or some better way to integrate a computer onto the frame without it interfering with clearance issues (cadence mountings) or floppy wires everywhere? How about a better way to carry more than 2 (sometimes 1) water bottles without some complicated seat rail rigging that's hard to install/take off on race day?