When Robert and I sat together near Petershausen, we had in mind that the established Italian steel frame builders had no reasonable answer to the US American attackers Klein and Cannondale, who were relying on aluminium.
Restricted by the material, they could only realise larger tube diameters (oversizing) to a limited extent. As a consequence they made the wall thicknesses of the tubes thinner.
In fact, the aluminium frames were increasingly more stable, converted hard acceleration into better propulsion and still weighed around 30% less. The steel frames also became somewhat lighter, but the riding characteristics deteriorated
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But how, as young German engineers, should we bring our riding sensations closer to the Italian frame builder gurus? Even today, every contract road racer naturally still says that he has the best road racing bike ever...
However, these first two test stands also had bizarre consequences. Some manufacturers fought real battles over the values, to the point of absurdity. In the USA, one manufacturer placed an ad in the relevant trade magazines simply because he had one Newton per millimetre more stiffness at the bottom bracket than his biggest competitor on the domestic market.
