| |
Should We Mourn the Death of Rim Brakes?
 Saturday, May 15th 2021, 9:21 AM;  108;  0;  +0 | 0 | -0
Should We Mourn the Death of Rim Brakes?
Look at any brand’s 2021 lineup of road bikes, and you’ll notice one common trend: They all have disc brakes. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, rim brake–equipped road bikes have been fading from existence since 2011, when disc brakes first appeared on road bikes. In 2018, eight of the 12 Trek Émonda models had rim brakes; of the 10 models in the 2021 lineup, zero do.To get more news about www.zpebicycle.com carbon fiber wheels</a>, you can visit zpebicycle.com official website.
That’s because, in the same way more riders acknowledged decades ago that integrated shift/brake levers were better than down-tube shifters because they were ergonomically better and made shifting faster and easier, they also recognize that disc brakes are superior to rim brakes—and they’re saying so with their wallets. I spoke to reps at more than a dozen bike companies, and each said something similar: Not only is the public not buying rim-brake bikes, but the suddenness with which it happened even caught brands off-guard.
“Riders stopped buying rim-brake road bikes before we stopped offering them,” said Jordan Roessingh, Trek’s road director. “Even when we offered rim-brake models, the demand for them rapidly decreased over the past two years, and, inversely, demand for the disc-brake road bike increased at an almost astonishing pace.”
Fisher Curran, BMC’s North American marketing coordinator, told me: “We’re releasing our new 2021 lineup with drastically reduced rim-brake platforms. I think we only have one bike offering with both rim and disc.” Even some smaller brands don’t see enough demand to continue with rim brakes—representatives from Argonaut and Allied told me they discontinued their rim-brake models due to lack of interest.
I even heard a bit of gallows humor around existing rim-brake models: “Let us know if you find any rim-brake holdouts,” said Specialized’s road and gravel category leader, Stewart Thompson. “We’ve got a few frames to sell ’em!”
But even while so many riders have embraced disc brakes on road bikes, some are still struggling—or even unwilling—to accept them. The switch to disc brakes evokes similar reactions to the time when integrated shift/brake levers replaced down-tube shifters. Now, like then, some riders are upset about the change because they feel it was forced upon them. Even some of the pushback rings familiar: They’re heavier, they’re more complicated, they’re ugly, they change the way the bike feels.
|
