For me the bike that started the romance was when I went to the bike store to pick up my brand new Dunelt 3 speed. The year was 1964 or 1965. I was 10 or 11, and there hanging dead center in the window of Angelo's bike shop on New York's Columbus avenue, was a beautiful all white Paramount. I would be guessing if I said if it was a track bike or a road bike, but the law of averages states that it was a road model with all the best that Campy could provide. I rode my Dunelt but I lusted after the memory of the Paramount.
Fifteen years later I am living in San Francisco (short, painful mistake due to 16 months of horrible sunless fog.), and I am enjoying my Team Fuji with Superbe Pro brakes (upgraded) and a very pro looking racer takes a block with me. He is astride a Pink Lotus with matching pink Silca frame pump. Lotus made one of their high line road bikes in Pink!!!! No fancy graphics, just good geometry, and top of the line drilled Campy. When a cyclist is on top of their game and rides something classic, the world needs to take notice. Pink is not my idea of a great color for a bike but this one worked well.
I never did own a Bianchi, but the Bianchi that is featured in Bicycling's 1981 cover article is one that I would own, if I saw one for sale. The cover had a picture of a beautiful Celeste Bianchi with a cyclist looking angrily at another cyclist on his Japanese bike (can't remember which one). The point was Italy's best vs. Japan's best and it went on glowingly about the Bianchi. Garth still not quite fast enough Libre.