Quote Originally Posted by Graham Breeze View Post
The man who sold me my Italian bike said that it was important to always remember that the bike business was a fashion industry and manufacturers had to keep coming up with new ideas to extract money from gullible cyclists.

He had been selling bikes for a very long time.
I have long thought this to be true. There is a lot of messing around with gears, derailleurs etc currently. It is difficult to separate fad from what is an innovation that might stick but if history is anything to go by, with the possible exception of disk brakes, the last 50 years have seen no great step change and just a series of marginal improvements.