Serotta Almost Listens To Zathras, But Not Quite

Strike Three!  Maybe Serotta attempted to follow the best advice the company could have ever been given: market the titanium road and off-road racing frames at the best price as a direct alternative to Gaulzetti and Crumpton and all the Chinese plastic garbage out there.  Well, if they indeed tried to do that, they failed.  Their new Fondo frame is astoundingly underwhelming.  The first mistake was not marketing it first and foremost as a racing/performance frame.  Let's face it, these things will be made one at time, so they could just as easily have had a relaxed, long-low option, but the key was the racing and high performance part, not the old-guy part, to call back to the days when Serotta was a player in big-time racing all over the world.  The next mistake was the fugly sloping top tube.  That just sucks.  Number three: not enough sizes.  Really, Serotta used to know how to build a racing bike, so they should have had every cm between 48 and 65 available, not six stupid sizes with stupid sloping top tubes and shitty geometry.  Giving up on the titanium off-road frame is major mistake, too.  The marketing should have pushed both sides of the racing world as the world of Serotta Cycles.  Fondo is not a great name, either.  Serotta Ti is the Legend, so the only possible name for this thing should have been the Legend Race, along with the Legend Race OR.  (Eliminating Serotta steel racing frames is hella-dumb, too.  If the titanium racing frames took off at 3 grand a pop, many of those buyers would probably be a good target for a steel copy of their frame--or a Serotta cyclocross racing rig--for training or winter or rain days or whatever at 1/2 the price.)  The last mistake is probably the price.  $2999 with fork is probably a better bet than $3200, but that doesn't matter because these things won't sell regardless.